Need additional info on Distro and the Openpublish upgrade strategy

I was starting to learn Openpublish 1.5 and heard that waiting for 1.6 for big changes was probably a good idea, due to the inclusion of the Distro module. So I postponed development for awhile so I could start fresh with 1.6.

Can you guys explain the upgrade process in greater detail?

Having read the Distro description, I understand it this way:

Distro will help tremendously when making updates to an existing OpenPublish installation as changes and new features are added to the OpenPublish distribution. In other words, when a new OpenPublish distro is released, it will be possible to upgrade an existing installation without breaking all the customizations and content added by the user between releases.

I hope that's the case, but I really don't understand how this will work exactly. Could the OpenPublish developers explain in more detail how Distro will aid in making future updates?? What are the requirements?

Also, I do my development work locally on a Windows machine using xampp. Will Distro work in this environment, or will I need to move my development to a linux machine in order to have access to Drush?

I am currently building an extensive news site and I'm really excited by OpenPublish. It not only gets me far along the development path but it also helps to "train" me on best practices for news sites. As OpenPublish matures, I want to include the enhancements that will be made over the next few months in preparation for version 2.0. But I'm concerned that the deeper I go into development, the harder it will be to update OpenPublish.

Thanks, and congratulations on a wonderful installation profile!