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Windows 7

General Information

Support Life Cycles for Vista and Windows 7

Installation

System Requirements
Which Version to Buy?
Full or Upgrade?
Upgrading
Windows Easy Transfer

General Information

This webpage doesn't purport to be a definitive collection of information about Windows 7. There are many websites that go into great detail about this operating system and I don't see the point in reinventing the wheel. I'll give you links to them here. This webpage is meant more to give you an overview of Windows 7 and help you when purchasing it.

Windows 7 is an improvement over Vista and yes, even over XP. It is far more secure than XP and its security features are much less annoying than those in Vista. While I personally am not tempted by it to switch from my Mac OS X, I have no hesitation in recommending Windows 7 to people who prefer to use a Microsoft operating system. You should be aware, however, that if you hated Vista or your programs and/or hardware didn't work with Vista, you will be in the same boat with Windows 7. Although it is being touted by Microsoft as a new operating system, it is more realistic to say that Windows 7 is really Vista Version 1.3. It is "Vista done right".

Support Life Cycles for Vista and Windows 7

You can find XP's Support Life Cycle here.

Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/gp/lifepolicy

Vista:

Products Released	General Availability Date	Mainstream Support Retired	Extended Support Retired	Service Pack Retired
Vista Business	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	4/11/2017	4/13/2010
Vista Business 64-bit	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	4/11/2017	4/13/2010
Vista Home Basic	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	Not Applicable	4/13/2010
Vista Home Basic 64-bit	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	Not Applicable	4/13/2010
Vista Home Premium	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	Not Applicable	4/13/2010
Vista Home Premium 64-bit	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	Not Applicable	4/13/2010
Vista Service Pack 1	4/4/2008	Not Applicable	Not Applicable	7/12/2011
Vista Service Pack 2	4/29/2009	See Note	See Note
Vista Ultimate	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	Not Applicable	4/13/2010
Vista Ultimate 64-bit	1/25/2007	4/10/2012	Not Applicable	4/13/2010

Note: Support ends 24 months after the next service pack releases or at the end of the product's support lifecycle, whichever comes first. For more information, please see the service pack policy at http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#ServicePackSupport .

Windows 7:

Products Released	General Availability Date	Maintstream Support Retired	Extended Support Retired	Service Pack Retired
Windows 7 Home Premium	10/22/2009	1/13/2015	1/14/2020
Windows 7 Professional	10/22/2009	1/13/2015	1/14/2020
Windows 7 Ultimate	10/22/2009	1/13/2015	1/14/2020

Installation

System Requirements

These are the minimum system requirements according to Microsoft:

A 1GHz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor
1GB of RAM for Win7 32-bit; 2GB of RAM for Win7 64-bit
16GB available hard drive space for Win7 32-bit; 20GB for Win7 64-bit
A video card that supports DirectX 9 with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

These are very minimal specs. Any recent computer is going to have a far faster processor, so that's not a worry. Although Win7 is far less demanding of hardware than Vista, I would still recommend 2GB of RAM as a minimum. I ran the betas and Release Candidate on my testbed box with 1.5GB of RAM and it did fine. I have the final version of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit running on a production machine that is quite powerful and the operating system really flies. That computer is a gaming system and so far Windows 7 has been able to handle everything that was thrown at it.

The available hard drive space quoted above is for the operating system only and so doesn't give you a real idea of what you'll need. Even if you install programs into a different partition (and this is foolish because they will all need to be reinstalled anyway after a Clean Install), they will put entries into the system drive (usually C:). I think a more realistic amount of drive space is a minimum of 40GB. However, with hard drives so cheap and huge nowadays this is only important if you are going to run Win7 in a virtual machine or try it out on an older, smaller hard drive.

Which Version to Buy?

Windows 7 Starter - OEM only and very basic. No one will want this. It is designed to be put on netbooks but although Microsoft has loosened its limitations somewhat, that doesn't change my opinion that no one in their right mind will want Starter Edition. I'm not even sure this will be available.

Windows 7 Home Basic - For emerging markets only. I don't care if you're feeling the pinch, we don't live in a Third World Country so you don't need to even consider this version.

Windows 7 Home Premium - OEM and Retail. This is what most home consumers will buy. Home Premium cannot join a domain, cannot act as a Remote Desktop host, doesn't have advanced backup features, no native encryption (EFS), no Offline Folders.

Windows 7 Professional - OEM and Retail. This builds on Home Premium and adds the ability to join a domain, to act as a Remote Desktop host, has location-aware printing, EFS, Mobility Center, Presentation Mode, and Offline Folders. It doesn't have BitLocker, BitLocker To Go, AppLocker, Direct Access, BrancheCache, MUI language packs, or the ability to boot from a VHD.

Windows 7 Enterprise - Volume-license business customers only. It is a super-set of Win7 Pro and includes BitLocker, BitLocker To Go, AppLocker, Direct Access, BrancheCache, MUI language packs, and the ability to boot from a VHD.

Windows 7 Ultimate - Retail (and possibly available as a special order from OEMs) but with limited availability. It has everything the Enterprise Edition has except the volume licensing.

Most consumers will purchase either Win7 Home Premium or Win7 Professional. Here's a very useful side-by-side, feature-by-feature comparison from Paul Thurrott:

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_skus_compare.asp

And here's Microsoft's page which also includes prices:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare-editions

Full Or Upgrade?

Most people realize that buying an upgrade version of an operating system or high-end program like Microsoft Office means that you must provide proof of ownership of the qualifying product. In the past, we were able to do an install of XP Upgrade by either 1) installing-in-place from within the running older operating system; or 2) doing a clean install and putting in the older operating system's CD when prompted to by the Upgrade installer. Like Vista, Windows 7 has a new way of installing and this is no longer possible. The Windows 7 Upgrade must be started from within Vista (an upgrade to Windows 7 from XP must be done as a clean install). As it was with Vista, if you use your Vista installation as the qualifying upgrade media then that Vista Product Key is tied to the new Windows 7 upgrade and cannot be used elsewhere. There was an unsupported way of doing a clean install of Vista using the less expensive upgrade disk, but at this writing (9/09) I have no idea whether that will work with Windows 7. Therefore at this time I don't recommend buying an upgrade version unless you are sure you will never want to use the Vista or XP license you upgraded to Win7 again. Yes, you save money by buying an upgrade but you also have limitations that may come back to bite you in the future.

Upgrading

XP upgrade - Microsoft has indicated that XP users may be able to take advantage of upgrade pricing, but they will only be able to upgrade by performing a clean install. There is no in-place upgrade.

Here are some more details from Paul Thurrott:

"Depending on the version of Windows you're upgrading from, you have choices. That is, with Windows Vista [...], you can do a traditional in-place upgrade, where you insert the Windows 7 Setup DVD in the existing OS, run Setup, and upgrade the entire system, applications and all, to the new OS. Or you can do a migration, where you use Windows 7's Easy Transfer utility to backup your settings and documents (but not your installed applications), perform a clean install of the Windows 7 OS, and then re-apply your settings and documents to Windows 7, again using Windows Easy Transfer.

"With Windows XP, your options are fewer: You cannot perform a traditional in-place upgrade but will rather instead have to do a migration using Windows Easy Transfer. While this type of upgrade is less convenient in many ways--after all, you will need to later reinstall all your applications--Easy Transfer does provide a nice report describing what's missing, and the result is a cleaner, more reliable system than what you'd get with an in-place upgrade. For this reason, I feel that a migration is actually the more desirable upgrade type, even for Windows Vista, assuming you have all the application installers (and product keys) you'd need to make that work."

According to Microsoft TechNet, you cannot upgrade to Windows 7 from Windows 9x/ME (no kidding!), XP, Vista without any Service Packs (RTM), Vista Starter, Windows 7 M3 (who even knows what that is?!), Windows 7 Beta, Windows 7 Release Candidate, or Windows 7 IDS (again, don't know what that is!). You also can't upgrade from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit system, from one language to another, and some other arcane versions of the operating system can't be used as an upgrade.

Supported Upgrade Paths

FROM	TO
Vista Business	Win7 Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate
Vista Enterprise	Win7 Enterprise
Vista Home Basic	Win7 Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate
Vista Home Premium	Win7 Home Premium, Ultimate
Vista Ultimate	Win7 Ultimate

FROM WINDOWS 7	REPAIR-IN-PLACE UPGRADE TO WINDOWS 7
Win7 Enterprise	Win7 Enterprise
Win7 Home Basic	Win7 Home Basic
Win7 Home Premium	Win7 Home Premium
Win7 Professional	Win7 Professional
Win7 Starter (32-bit only)	Win7 Starter (32-bit)
Win7 Ultimate	Win7 Ultimate

FROM WINDOWS 7	ANYTIME UPGRADE TO WINDOWS 7
Win7 Home Basic	Win7 Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate
Win 7 Home Premium	Win7 Professional, Ultimate
Win7 Professional	Win7 Ultimate
Win7 Starter	Win7 Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate

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Windows Easy Transfer

Windows Easy Transfer (which originated in Vista) is one way to migrate all your users, their settings, and their data to the new installation of Windows 7. You must first install Windows 7 and then install whatever programs you had in Vista or XP. Windows Easy Transfer ("WET") will not automagically install programs. At one time (for Vista) Microsoft indicated they were working on a utility that would also transfer programs, but I have not heard anything further about it and as far as I know it isn't a Windows 7 WET feature.

You can read about the details of Windows Easy Transfer on The Windows Experience Blog here.

From Paul Thurrott:

".... you'll need to use a built-in utility on the Windows 7 Setup DVD called Windows Easy Transfer to transfer your documents and settings from your XP-based PC to a backup location first. Then, you will perform a clean install of Windows 7 and then use Windows Easy Transfer on the new install to copy over all your settings and data.

"Windows Easy Transfer is a way to bridge the 32-bit/64-bit divide as well. While you cannot perform an in-place upgrade between any 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, you can use Easy Transfer to move your settings and documents from a 32-bit version of Windows to a 64-bit version (and vice versa)."

Windows 7 Links

General

Windows 7 Home - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx
What's New in Windows 7 - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/whats-new.aspx
Windows 7 Team Blog - http://windowsteamblog.com/
Videos - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/videos.aspx
Microsoft TechNet Springboard Series - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd361745.aspx?ITPID=carepgm
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows - http://www.winsupersite.com/
Windows 7 in the Enterprise - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/
Windows 7 Application Compatibility - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/aa905066.aspx

Installation

Windows 7: Which One Is Right For You? - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare-editions
Install Win7 alongside Vista for a Dual Boot - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd494658.aspx
Step-by-Step Win7 Migration - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd446674%28WS.10%29.aspx
Upgrade paths - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd772579%28WS.10%29.aspx
Use a USB Thumb Drive to Install Win7 - Even on a Netbook - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd535816.aspx

Forums

More technical - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/w7itpro/
Less technical - http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/GettingReadyforWindows7/threads
http://www.sevenforums.com