jimbo,
Even if there is an upgrade option, I highly recommend you do a "clean install" as I've done this update option with other versions of Windows and you end up with several hundred old files from the previous OS that are of no use at all
I've got an HP and although it comes with tons of HP crap, that's the first thing I uninstaled. However, all you have to do (if your PC comes with the recovery partion) is to copy or more (doesn't matter) the application files to an external drive. For instance, I didn't want to lose my apps such as Cyberlink Power Producer, DVD Blue-ray DVD Play, Power2 go, Label Print, Lighscribe and muvee auto producer, so they can be re-installed.
It did not come with a recovery disk, although after having so many problems with it, they finally agreed to send me 3 DVD's for re-installing.
You can also use a free forensic tool called FTK Imager, to make a bit stream copy of the recovery partition, then delete it.
You can download FTK Imager here:
AccessData Downloads
Scroll down to the utilities section and choose FTK Imager 2.55. When you've imaged the logical drive, you can simply export the applications wherever you prefer and re-install them
Actually, my recovery partition is only 9 GB in size.