For many people, Windows Anytime Upgrades feature count as pure gravy for Microsoft: You only need to follow the upgrade instructions and Windows asks you to connect to the Internet, type in your credit card number, and immediately upgrade on the spot. Surely, you don’t get a DVD or a box. All you get is a serial number and a walkthrough to upgrade your Windows 7. It is pure profit for those smart people in Redmond. No production and distribution costs, just pure profit.

You may dismiss these Windows 7 editions out of hand:

• Windows 7 SE (Starter Edition): it is offered to low-end home PCs and also netbooks. If the store selling the netbook offers the Home Premium edition, at a slightly higher price, then you should take it instead of Starter. Why? Home Premium does not place much greater requirements on the hardware, and it is packed with features you often need – including, especially, Media Center. The seller should know if its netbook and low-end notebooks can handle Home Premium. In most cases, it can.
• Windows 7 Home Basic: although it’s available in your favorite store, you shouldn’t buy it. With no Media Center and no Aero Glass, it isn’t worth the investment.  Besides, Windows 7 Professional and lower are destined to be replaced with pirated copies of Windows 7 Ultimate anyway.

You minimum choice should be Windows 7 Home Premium, unless there is a crying need to have one of these:

• Remote Desktop interaction. If you are stuck with Remote Desktop, you should buy Windows 7 Ultimate or at least, Professional. However, many people find that LogMeIn, a free substitute to Remote Desktop, can do everything they need or want, while Remote Desktop amounts to overkill. It allows adequate control and access on your office or home computer from any location that has a reliable Internet connection.
• Connect the corporate network. If your IT department doesn’t give you a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, you should spend some extra bucks and at least upgrade to Windows 7 Professional to use corporate network effectively.
• Have more data protection from prying eyes and keep your laptop’s data safe even if it is stolen or lost. Start by deciding whether you need BitLocker or Encrypting File System (EFS) or both. Ultimate has both BitLocker and EFS, while Windows 7 Professional only has EFS

• Change languages. In any edition of Windows 7, you can change the keyboard language – you can quickly type Cyrillic characters, for instance, on a standard US English version of Windows 7. However if you prefer to have all the prompts, all the Help files, and all the menus in Russian or other languages, you need to buy Ultimate.

1.   Go to Start>Control Panel.

2.   Go to ‘System and Maintenance’.

3.   Click ‘Check Your Computer’s Windows’, in the System group.

The WEI in Windows 7 is substantially different from the one you find in Windows Vista, but the Vista Windows Experience Index can give you some crucial insight into what is in store for Windows 7. (Regrettably, Windows XP does not use WEI)

Here is what you may learn, after plenty of school-of-hard-knocking around:

• If the Vista WEI is 2.0 or better, you can run Windows 7 reasonably well. Windows 7 will make up its own mind whether it should turn on Glass, or not.  Granted, you would not want to use a machine with a Vista Windows Experience Index rating of 2.0 for gaming or heavy graphics. But it is adequate for standard word processing, web browsing, daily spreadsheets, and other light activities
• If the Graphics subscore, the one called ‘Desktop Performance for Windows Aero’ is 3.0 and above, Windows 7 will turn on the Glass interface. It happens even if Windows Vista turns it off.
• For many, most of the time, the RAM (memory), Primary Hard Disk, and Gaming Graphics subscores don’t mean much. While, the processor subscore may have more influence in how Windows 7 works for you, but maybe not as significant as you may believe.

If you are ready to take the Windows 7 plunge and upgrade your Windows Vista PC to Windows 7, you can get the most bang for the buck if you have enough of the following few components:

• RAM: You should have at least 1 Gb of RAM, and it would not hurt to put in 2 GB or maybe 4 GB. Memory modules are cheap. Ask the dealer to install them.
• Graphics card: If the computer’s Graphics subscore is under 4.0 or so, you will see a significant improvement in Windows 7 operation by replacing an older graphics card with a cheap, newer and relatively fast graphic card, like ATI Radeon HD 4670 or GeForce 9600 GT. That is assuming you can replace the older graphics card – nearly all notebooks and some desktops have integrated graphic cards.

In short, if your old hardware does not work with Windows Vista, it probably does not work with Windows 7 either. It’s OK to give up now.

It is a simple fact that programs and games are getting too large and all Windows versions, as we know it, are simply running out of room. If you have small amount of RAM, Windows will fake it by shuffling files between hard drive, RAM and processor, doing so will slow your system significantly.  The 32-bit version of Windows – the version that all of us were having for many years – limits the amount of RAM that Windows may use. A 32-bit Windows system can detect at the most, 3.4 or 3.5 Gb (Gigabyte) of memory.  You can stick 4 Gb of RAM into your machine, but in the 32-bit universe, anything beyond 3.5 Gb is simply doesn’t exist. It just sits there wasted.  So, in 5 or 6 years from now, when programs and games need at least 4 Gb of RAM, no matter how fast your machine is and how many RAM you have, your PC will run like a slug if you still use a 32-bit Windows. The 64-bit version of Windows 7 opens up wider access to computer’s RAM, so your machine can use 17.2 billions Gb of RAM!

There is one more good reason for using a 64-bit version of Windows 7: Security! Microsoft enforced certain strict security constraints on hardware drivers for 64-bit machines – they just couldn’t be implemented in the more lax and older 32-bit system.

That surely leads to a major problem with 64-bit Windows: hardware drivers. Most computer owners have older hardware that simply does not work in any 64-bit version of Windows. Many hardware manufacturers think that it isn’t worth the time and effort to develop a solid 64-bit driver, that allow an older hardware to work well with a 64-bit operating system. As always customers tend to get the short end of the stick.

To run a 64-bit Windows version, your computer has to support 64-bit operations.  Here is a simple way to see whether your machine can handle 64-bits functions: visit grc.com/securable.htm.  Then follow the steps mentioned to run the free SecurAble program. If your machine can handle 64-bit functions, SecurAble tells you about it accurately.  If you have an older machine and want to use Windows 7, just do yourself a favor and you should stick with 32-bit version. It’s likely that you won’t start feeling the limitations of 32-bits until your machine is long past its prime. However, if you’re starting out with entirely new machine and you want to run it for a very long time (five years or more), 64-bit Windows 7 surely makes a lot of sense. Although, you may end up cursing every time you can’t find a proper 64-bit driver. But in the end, you will be better prepared for future requirements.