Windows 7 was introduced on October the 22nd of 2009.
This was less than three years after the release
of Windows Vista.
This is the upgrade for Windows Vista,
and it has a very similar look and feel to Windows Vista.
In fact, it's very difficult to even tell at first glance
exactly what version of the operating system
you're looking at, whether it's Windows Vista or Windows 7.
There were a number of updated features in Windows 7,
including Libraries, Homegroup, and a Pin Taskbar right
here at the bottom of the screen.
Like Windows Vista, Windows 7 is also
available in a number of different editions.
We're going to look at Windows 7 Starter in this video.
We won't go through a lot of detail
about Windows 7 Home Basic.
This is a version of Windows that you generally
see in emerging markets.
We will talk about Windows 7 Home Premium,
Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Professional,
and Windows 7 Enterprise.
Before we had tablets, we had a slimmed down laptop
that we called Netbooks.
And Windows 7 Starter was specifically
designed for this Netbook market.
This didn't have any type of DVD playback
and obviously there was no media center capabilities
because of the limited hardware inside of these Netbooks.
We also didn't have a lot of graphical capabilities,
so there was no Windows Aero graphical functionality
in Windows 7 Starter either.
There was no internet connection sharing
since this would probably not be a device that people connected
to to get their internet access.
It also didn't have web server capabilities,
and it also didn't have any of the Enterprise capabilities
that you might see in other editions of Windows 7.
This is only also available in a 32-bit version.
There were no 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Starter,
and this only supported a maximum
of two gigabytes of memory.
Windows 7 Home Premium is the consumer edition of Windows 7.
It's what most people would have at home.
So it includes things like the ability to playback DVDs.
You had nice graphical capabilities in Windows Aero.
It allowed you to have this device provide Connection
Sharing for your internet.
And you could also run the IIS web server from the Windows 7
Home Premium.
But this did not allow you to connect to Enterprise networks
using Active Directory.
There was no full disk encryption
that you get with BitLocker or even the support
to enable EFS or individual file encryption in the operating
system.
The 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium
supported 16 gigabytes of RAM and two physical processors,
so you could run a relatively beefy system at home
using Windows 7 Home Premium.
As the name implies, Windows 7 Ultimate
gives you every capability in the Windows 7 operating system.
You have the ability to connect to Active Directory domains.
You can be a remote desktop server,
and you can encrypt individual files in the file system.
You also have all of the other Enterprise
technologies like full disk encryption with BitLocker.
And the 64-bit version of Windows 7
Ultimate supports a total of 192 gigabytes of memory.
In fact, Windows 7 Ultimate has exactly the same features
as Windows 7 Enterprise, except you can get Windows 7 Ultimate
for the home.
Windows 7 Professional is what most people
will see in their workplace.
It has all the same features as Windows Home Premium,
but it also enables your system to connect to a Windows Active
Directory domain.
It also supports Remote Desktop as a host
and supports the encrypted file system.
It does not, however, include BitLocker,
which is the full disk encryption
that you might see in the other editions of Windows.
And, like Windows 7 Ultimate, the 64-bit version
of Windows 7 Professional supports up to 192 gigabytes
of memory.
If you have a volume license agreement with Microsoft,
then your organization may be using Windows 7 Enterprise.
This includes similar features to what you might
find in Windows 7 Ultimate.
But it also includes things like the multilingual user interface
packages, which is important if you have an organization that
is world wide.
This also includes full disk encryption for BitLocker
so that you can protect all of your mobile devices as well.
The Windows 7 hardware requirements
are separated into the 32-bit hardware
requirements and the 64-bit hardware requirements.
On both of these, you would need a 1 gigahertz processor.
You need 1 gigabyte of RAM for the 32-bit version and 2
gigabytes if you're running the 64-bit version.
You need at least 16 gigabytes of free disk space
to install the 32-bit version of Windows 7.
You'll need 20 gigabytes of free space for the 64-bit version.
And in both of these, you need a DirectX 9 graphics device
with the Windows display driver model version 1.0 or higher.
Here's a summary of the different feature
capabilities for the different editions of Windows 7.
You can see how this compares between DVD playback, the Aero
graphics capability, the Internet Connection Sharing
function, the Active Directory domain
membership, the encrypting file system, BitLocker.
And you can also see the different maximum memory
for the 32-bit version of the operating system
and the 64-bit version as well.