About half of the 40 templates you are refering to are stored as .STP (Site Templates) which are no longer supported in SharePoint 2010 so those can't be installed. The other 20 or so are .WSP files which SharePoint 2010 does support, but many of those
use functionality that has changed in SharePoint 2010 so most of those won't install or won't work cleanly if they do install. I have heard some people report that some SharePoint 2007 sites that use the templates can be upgraded using the in-place upgrade
method successfully, but I haven't tested that.
Microsoft has not officially decided whether the 40 SharePoint 2007 templates will be updated to 2010 or not. I am aware of a third party site that has updated a few of them to be 2010 compatible. You can find them here:
http://techsolutions.net/Blog/tabid/65/EntryId/17/Fab-40-Templates-for-MOSS-2010.aspx
Please be aware that these were originally meant to be samples from Microsoft to demonstrate concepts and generate ideas. They never intended for people to use them in production as delivered.
Paul Stork SharePoint Server MVP
