Welcome back to IT Free Training course on Windows 7. Before you start installing or
upgrading to Windows 7, it is a good idea to understand the minimum requirements for
Windows 7 and the different features each edition has. Even though the minimum requirements
and editions are not specially stated as exam objectives, having an understanding of these
will help you when installing and upgrading to Windows 7.
If you are running Windows Vista, you will be happy to know that the system requirements
have not increased too much. In a lot of cases the only hardware upgrade you will need to
perform will be the For the minimum requirements you need a 1
Gigahertz CPU either 32 bit or 64 bit. The same as Windows Vista. The RAM requirements
have increased since Windows Vista. For the 32 bit version you need 1 gigabytes of RAM.
While the 64 bit version needs 2 gigabytes of RAM. RAM is more affordable so it is a
good idea to purchase more. Windows 7 will use the extra RAM to increase the system's
performance. You will need 16 gigabytes of free space to
install the 32 bit version and 20 gigabytes free space for the 64 bit version. As with
the RAM, the more hard disk space the better. These figures are only for the base install.
If you are planning on installing additional Windows features the amount of hard disk space
that you require will increase. Lastly you will require a graphics card that
supports Directx 9 and comes with a WDDM driver. Now days with directx 11 being the latest
version and directx 9 last release being 9c in 2008, all videos cards on the market should
support this. To run the Aero interface, Windows look glassing
effect, you need at least 128 megabytes of video RAM. Microsoft do however recommend
that you have at least 256 Mega bytes of RAM on your video card. In the real world the
amount of video RAM you need is determined by what resolution you are running. If you
are running two monitors off the one p.c, you will need to double the amount of video
RAM. For Aero to run, your video card must also support 32 bit color and pixel shader
2 point 0. They are currently up to pixel shader 5 point 0 with pixel shader 2 point
0 being supported by Microsoft since the release of directx 9 back in 2003. So again, any modern
video card should support these requirements. There are 6 different editions of Windows
7. As you go from left to right more features become available. Those that are familiar
with Windows vista will remember that certain features were available in home premium but
were not available in the business or the enterprise editions. This is not the case
with Windows 7. As you go through the editions from left to right, ever feature from the
previous edition is available in the next edition.
The first edition is the starter edition. In the USA, this edition is only available
on small notebook P.C's. These small p.c.'s usually sell for only a few hundred dollars
and are great for mobile users that only want to access the internet, write documents and
sent e-mails. The starter edition is the only edition of Windows 7 that does not support
64 bit processors. Since it is aimed at a general P.C. user, graphical application are
not included like DVD support and the Aero interface.
The next edition is the home basic edition and is available only in emerging markets
like Brazil, Thailand and Mexico. 64 bit is supported, but like the starter edition, only
one CPU is supported with any number of cores. There is some support for the Aero interface,
but certain features of the Aero interface have been removed.
The next edition is the home premium edition and is aimed at the home user market. This
edition supports more features a home user would want like DVD player back and the media
center. Also the Aero interface is included in this edition.
The professional edition is the first edition aimed at the business market. Not only does
it include all the previous features of the other editions, but it adds domain support
and the ability to install more than one CPU. Remember however, all editions support multiple
cores if your CPU has them. Support is also included for Windows XP mode. Windows XP mode
allows a program to run in a virtual Windows XP environment and seamless interact with
Windows 7. If you have an old Windows XP program that does not work with Windows 7 you may
get around the problem by using xp mode. Hopefully xp mode will allow the program to operate
with Windows 7. The last two editions are the enterprise and
ultimate editions. Feature wise these editions are identical. They include support for App
Locker. App locker allows you to enforce which applications are allowed to run on your system
by creating an approved list of applications. This prevents users from installing applications
that they may not have licenses for. The feature bit locker allows you to encrypt your hard
disk so that if it is removed from the computer the hard disk can't be read. This helps to
stop your data being used if a laptop or computer is stolen.
Since these editions are aimed at business, support for direct access is also included.
Direct access allows a computer to automatically connect up to a company's v p n without any
interaction from the user. This means the computer can access updates and group policy
without the user having to login. This is a great feature if you have a lot of mobile
users. Next is support is for virtual hard disks.
For those that have used products like Hyper V will know that the virtual machines hard
disks are stored in a v h d file. This v h d file can be copied or moved to another computer
and used by anther virtual machine. For those of you who did not know that, now you know.
Windows 7 enterprise and ultimate editions allow you to create a virtual hard disk and
store the v h d file on your existing hard disk. You can even boot Windows 7 from a virtual
hard disk stored on your local hard disk. This is a great feature if you want to dual
boot your system. Dual boot simply means installing more than one operating system on the same
physical computer. Later in the course I will look into dual booting in more detail. Using
a v h d files means you no longer have to partition your hard disk or add an additional
hard disk if you want to dual boot your system. Lastly these two editions support branch cache.
Branch cache allows a Windows 7 computers to cache files that were copied over the wide
area network. This means that if anther Windows 7 computer attempts to access these files,
they can retrieve them from the cache rather than coping the files over the wide area network
again. Features wise these editions are the same,
the actual difference between the two editions is the way that they are licensed. The enterprise
edition is only available to customers that use Microsoft's volume licensing. The ultimate
edition is available via retail. The last thing to consider when deciding on
which editions of Windows 7 to install is how much memory you want to use.
If you using a 32 bit system, the most RAM you will be able to use is 4 gigabytes. Note
however if you are running the starter edition of Windows 7 this is limited to 2 gigabytes
while all the other editions are limited to 4 gigabytes. One thing to keep in mind if
you are running a 32 bit system with 4 gigabytes of RAM is that the computer will not be able
to access all the RAM. In my experience, systems with 4 gigabytes of RAM generally can only
access about 3 quarters of the RAM. This occurs because hardware installed in the computer
must also have its RAM mapped out in the 4 gigabyte space. The biggest user of this is
generally the video card. Since two devices can't access the same space the system can
only allow one and thus the total accessible RAM on your system on a 32 bit system with
4 gigabytes of RAM is never 4 gigabytes. If you are running a 64 bit system the amount
of RAM you can access changes quite a lot. The starter edition is not available in a
64 bit edition. The home basic edition is available in emerging markets only jumps to
8 gigabytes. The home premium edition supports 16 gigabytes which is more than enough for
the average home user. All the rest of the editions supports 192 gigabytes of RAM. This
is plenty of RAM and you would be hard pressed to find a motherboard that could support that
much RAM in today's market place. But believe it not, motherboards that support this much
RAM do exist. Once you meet the minimum requirements for
Windows 7 and you decide which edition you want, you are ready to install Windows 7 which
is the topic of our next video.