You missed the point. If you go the upgrade route and anything does go wrong you
don't have a disk with the latest release. You must go through the whole process
if you ever need to re-install. That means that all of the downloading was for
nothing and must be done again. If you have the disk then you are only starting
at the midpoint. In your situation, you would have to re-install 7.10 again then
upgrade to where 8.04 starts because you don't have 8.04 on disk.
My point was generally it is best to do a clean installation. Because Linux is
modular you can save your home directory or even better have it reside on a
separate partition and therefore anything you do to the root partition can't
hurt you. Upgrades from disk are a piece of cake if you have your system set up
properly.
I should know. I have 11 Linux partitions for distros plus a home and swap
partition. I install distros and de-install them daily. To date I have never had
to re-do my home directory. I have kept the same one for years and never lost a
piece of data or a setting. I would be hard pressed to set up my Thunderbird
accounts from scratch simply because I never need to. I say this and previous
comments so that people can realize how easy Linux is to install and replace if
need be.
I almost never upgrade. It just isn't worth the hassle to me. I keep the most
recent releases of my favorite distros on disk or save them as ISOs to use with
Unetbootin. If it strikes my fancy I will delete my whole Ubuntu or any other
distro and replace it, just for fun. Call me warped, but it is so easy to
install. There is no need to fear, so why take any chances with placing good on
top of perhaps bad when you don't have to. A clean installation gives you a
fresh start. There is no risk. With an upgrade you take what you get because
like it or not it is a patch work.
Saying that your upgrade went okay so upgrades in general are okay is like
saying that you have never got cancer from smoking so smoking is okay.