Just want to point out one Windows difference from what Kent said in the week 1 video and that is while you do have the zip file option also, there actually is an installer for Blender users using Windows that you can use as well.
If you want to back up the current version, I believe it’s in one of the Program Files under Blender Foundation. A CTRL-RIGHT-Click and drag of the Blender folder to the same folder it is in will give you an option to copy the folder (may need admin privileges), which you can rename to from Blender-copy to something that is more meaningful (such as if you’re upgrading from 2.78 to 2.79, renaming the old one 2.78). Once that is done, you can upgrade without losing the previous version.
