Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Center

Are you installing Microsoft Windows 7?

Before getting caught up in the excitement of installing a new operating system, you first need to determine if your computer or network is capable of delivering the Windows 7 experience. With sophisticated features comes increased hardware demands and unless your working with newer computers, you may need to invest in some hardware upgrades—especially memory upgrades—before you take the plunge into Windows 7.

Windows 7 Requirements

Architecture	32-bit	64-bit
Processor speed	1 GHz 32-bit processor	1 GHz 64-bit processor
Memory (RAM)	1 GB of RAM	2 GB of RAM
Graphics card	DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM driver model 1.0
HDD free space	16 GB of available disk space	20 GB of available disk space
Optical drive	DVD drive (only to install from DVD/CD Media)

Ready to start shopping? Use the Memory MatchMaker tool to find guaranteed compatible memory for your specific needs.

Windows 7 Home Premium

The best entertainment experience on your PC

Windows 7 Home Premium makes it easy to create a home network and share all of your favorite photos, videos, and music. You can even watch, pause, rewind, and record TV. Get the best entertainment experience with Windows 7 Home Premium.

Windows 7 Professional

Everything you need for work and home

With Windows 7 Professional, fewer walls stand between you and your success. You can run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode and recover data easily with automatic backups to your home or business network. You can also connect to company networks effortlessly and more securely with Domain Join. With all the exciting entertainment features of Windows Home Premium, it´s a great choice for home and for business.

Windows 7 Ultimate

Designed for people who want it all

Windows 7 Ultimate is the most versatile and powerful edition of Windows 7. It combines remarkable ease-of-use with the entertainment features of Home Premium and the business capabilities of Professional, including the ability to run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode. For added security, you can encrypt your data with BitLocker and BitLocker To Go. And for extra flexibility, you can work in any of 35 languages. Get it all with Windows 7 Ultimate.

Which Windows 7 is best for you?	Home Premium	Professional	Ultimate
Make the things you do every day easier withimproved desktop navigation.	X	X	X
Start programs faster and more easily, and quicklyfind the documents you use most often.	X	X	X
Make your web experience faster, easier and safer than ever with Internet Explorer 8.	X	X	X
Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV on your PC.	X	X	X
Easily create a home network and connect your PCs to a printer with HomeGroup.	X	X	X
Run many Windows XP productivity programs inWindows XP Mode.		X	X
Connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join.		X	X
In addition to full-system Backup and Restore found in all editions, you can back up to a home or business network.		X	X
Help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker.			X
Work in the language of your choice and switch between any of 35 languages.			X

Windows 7 simplifies everyday tasks

Desktop

Introducing improved taskbar previews, bigger icons, pinning, and creative ways to personalize.

HomeGroup

Takes the headache out of home networking, so it´s easier to share files and printers.

Jump Lists

Speedy access to your favorite pictures, songs, websites, and documents.

Snap

A quick (and fun) new way to resize and compare windows on your desktop.

Windows Live Essentials

Must-have software for your PC free! Get Mail, Photo Gallery, and other favorites.

Windows Search

At last, searching your PC is as simple as searching the web.

Windows 7 works the way you want

Performance improvements

It´s designed to sleep and resume quicker, be less memory hungry, and spot USB devices faster.

Full 64-bit support

Windows 7 makes the most of powerful 64-bit PCs, the new desktop standard.

Power management

New power-saving features are designed to help laptops run longer

Windows 7 makes new things possible

Easier wireless networking

Windows 7 gets you online in fewer clicks.

Windows Media Center

Watch, record, and pause live TV (additional hardware required).

Windows Touch

Pair Windows 7 with a touch-sensitive PC and you won't always need a keyboard or mouse.

New and changed features

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, DirectAccess, and kernel improvements. Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version of Windows Media Center, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion. Many new items have been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display. Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer. The default setting for User Account Control in Windows 7 has been criticized for allowing untrusted software to be launched with elevated privileges by exploiting a trusted application. Microsoft's Windows kernel engineer Mark Russinovich acknowledged the problem, but noted that there are other vulnerabilities that do not rely on the new setting.

The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks. The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons. To the far right of the system clock is a small rectangular button that serves as the Show desktop icon. This button is part of the new feature in Windows 7 called Aero Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop. In touch-enabled displays such as touch screens, tablet PCs, etc., this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a finger. Clicking this button minimizes all windows, and clicking it a second time restores them. Additionally, there is a feature named Aero Snap, that automatically maximizes a window when it is dragged to either the top or left/right edges of the screen. This also allows users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen to compare them. When a user moves windows that are maximized, the system restores their previous state automatically. This functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Unlike in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aero applied. Instead, they remain transparent.

For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP-based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET-based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages, and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API. At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB. Microsoft is also implementing better support for Solid State Drives, including the new TRIM command, and Windows 7 will be able to identify a Solid State Drive uniquely. Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7. Windows 7 will include Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.

Users will also be able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform. Windows 7 includes 13 additional sound schemes, titled Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savanna, and Sonata. A new version of Virtual PC, Windows Virtual PC Beta is available for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. It allows multiple Windows environments, including Windows XP Mode, to run on the same machine, requiring the use of Intel VT-x or AMD-V. Windows XP Mode runs Windows XP in a virtual machine and redirects displayed applications running in Windows XP to the Windows 7 desktop. Furthermore Windows 7 supports the mounting of a virtual hard disk (VHD) as a normal data storage, and the bootloader delivered with Windows 7 can boot the Windows system from a VHD. The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) of Windows 7 is also enhanced to support real-time multimedia application including video playback and 3D games. That means that Direct X 10 can be used in a remote desktop environment. The three application limit will be removed from Windows 7 Starter.