Upgrading my laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 7, please advise

There are alot of well intentioned posts here, but all you really need to do is save any files that you personally created. ie word docs or any other "office" files. Since you are running vista most everything else should work ok.
As everyone here has said a clean install is always best with windows, but if you are really worried at least check toshiba's web site about the upgrade.
I have been upgrading my computers since windows 98 came out and believe me vista > win7 is the easiest yet.
No matter what , you will be very happy once you complete the change. win7 is so smaooth compared to vista.
good luck

Dear Jean,
It is main qestion! Why?
You do not give us any info about your computer configuration, OS itself too. There are so many Vista's.
First I will advice you that if you are not enough literate with computers, do not do nothing.
If you got a laptop with Vista Ultimate 64, you will nothing win by installation of Windows 7 any edition, you will got only troubles.
A lot of posts give you advices to look at Toshiba site for exact possibilites of your hardware.
This is main you must made first! Why? Because some of laptops are made strongly oriented to the OS preinstalled and very often you will not found needed drivers for your hardware. Probably you do not need of half working laptop.
I tell you based of my experience by one HP bought by Vista Home Premium. Only possible was moving to Vista Ultimate 64 and I am happy by this edition. I have experience by W7 on other PC's but did not found too big difference by use of programs, speed etc. First look at Windows 8 is about the same.
Best regards!

Why not just wait for the incoming Windows 8?

I'm facing problems with the registry, which is an ongoing issue I have with Microsoft Windows as an operating system.
In order to clean up your registry, and you will likely have to do this as I'll explain later, you need administrator access. Even if you're the only one that uses the computer. I understand why they do it this way - to keep you from royally screwing things up - but it's irritating as all get out.
The problem I found was that Citrix wan't 7 compatable and had to be uninstalled and then reinstalled. You find some of these things out AFTER you do the update to 7. As you probably know, Microsoft wants to know every single piece of software you've ever attempted to load or unload, and will hold that in the registry forever and ever, amen. Reloading Citrix while the registry contains a pointer for it will not work. Citrix thinks that it's already there and won't load until you uninstall the old version.
I ran into the same problems with certain features of my laptop, my multifunction printer and a few othre programs. Sometimes Microsoft tries too hard to protect us from ourselves.