My husband clean installed Windows 7 on his Vista notebook and had no issues. As for me, my new Windows 7 desktop PC arrived today and it was very easy to set up! It recognized my home network by itself with no setup required by me at all, other than inputting my security code. It configured outlook for my email without me having to manually input the settings, as I had had to do in XP. Old keyboard and mouse worked fine-- just plug and play. I transferred files from my old XP computer to Windows 7 with just a transfer cable. All files I've tried so far run fine. I'm very happy with it. I didn't like Vista at all, which is why, like you, I had kept my old PC running on XP.
Best of luck to you in making the transition.
