http://www.zdnet.com/article/sticking-with-windows-7-the-forecast-calls-for-pain/?tag=nl.e539&s_cid=e539&ttag=e539&ftag=TRE17cfd61

Yes, 216 Important updates are available, and you\'d have to be crazy to connect to the Internet without installing those patches first.

But that\'s not the worst of it.

Just getting to that screen took more than eight hours, thanks to a bug that was documented last fall in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 3102810: Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

\"Slow\" does not even begin to describe the glacial pace at which Windows 7 works before even displaying the list of available updates.

There is a workaround, as I discovered. Download two updates before starting the installation process, KB3083710 and KB3012810, and copy them to a USB flash drive. Install Windows 7 with SP1 and leave the network cable disconnected. Install those two updates from the flash drive before connecting to the network and running Windows Update for the first time, and you can cut that horrendous delay down to a matter of a few minutes.

Even then you have many hours of work ahead of you.