Vista "upgrade" drops compliance checking, requires old OS to install

Well, I’m reading the manual for the Vista Ultimate Bill Gates Signature Edition Upgrade, and it says I can clean install if the version of Windows I have is not upgradeable-in-place (ie Windows 2000) or if I have a clean hard drive with no OS installed. Currently backing up files right now, then will wipe out this Boot Camp partition on my MacBook Pro, create a new one, and see if I can clean install.

Uh? We have various copies of Windows kicking around. When we need to reinstall XP Home/Office on someone’s computer, we use our disk with their key, and/or call up M$ and have them verify and register the computer remotely. This saves a lot of the dealing-with-the-customer’s-disks-or-lackthereof headache. I presume we’ll simply do the same thing with Vista. Why not do it that way?

I just installed Windows Ultimate Upgrade on a clean partition. Deleted the old Windows partition, so I wiped it out completely, and then created a fresh one. Ultimate Upgrade did a clean install with no issues. Didn’t even ask if I was upgrading.

I haven’t entered a product key yet to activate. I skipped that part since I have 30 days to activate and don’t want to commit until I make sure this thing is running fine. Though I doubt they’d ask about if I was complying with an upgrade at that step.