Do you guys feel like upgrading is a bad idea? That a clean install is the safest way to go about moving forward to Windows 7?
Or is upgrading just fine?

I am running 64b Vista Ultimate

fresh install is allways a good idea. but if upgrade u dont need to safe ur files.

I agree. I would grab the files that I need and reinstall after a good long format.

Yea, I always recommend doing a clean install. IMO, it tends to work out better that way. I personally would never do an upgrade, and even with the Upgrade version of Windows you can do a clean install. Just make sure you backup any files you need, and I would recommend doing that even if you decide to upgrade instead, that way if something messes up you still have your files.

I can confirm this as well. I for one paid my $30 for an academically discounted upgrade to Windows 7 x64 from Vista Ultimate x64. I had read reports of not being able to do a clean install (being able to actually reformat the partition) with an upgrade version of 7 but at least in my case I can speak against those claims. I'm currently running Windows 7 Pro x64 with no problems. The biggest problem I had was burning my downloaded upgrade to an iso file readable by the system as an upgrade disc. Needless to say, not too daunting a problem.

Clean install works great unless you are "too lazy to reinstall all programs, settings and all" (that's me)!! Upgrade is usually very slow compared to a clean install!

Clean install. Always the best option to avoid problems later down the track.