Windows 7 Upgrade: What You Need to Know…
I was talking to my sister today and we discussed upgrading to Windows 7 for an hour or so. We discussed a number of things: licenses vs. installation discs, 32-bit vs. 64-bit, and hardware requirements. Don’t worry. Even the in-depth portion won’t be too technical and maybe you can pick up a factoid here and there to impress your friends and pets.
While this discussion will mention Windows 7, it isn’t specific to Windows 7 and can apply to most any software you use. Even the free stuff that isn’t made by a big corporation.
Licenses vs. Media
Let’s start with a simple example: My sister is a student. She can purchase a copy of Windows 7 for $30. She can give me the disc and I can install it at my house on my computer. It is physically possible for me to do that. However, if I read the license agreement, it says that it can only be installed on the personal computer of a student. In other words, the license governs the stipulations of use.
Now we can dig in a bit more. Media may consist of installation discs which are CDs or DVDs that hold all the files you will need to install Windows 7. Fairly easily, you could make a hundred copies of the disc. It would only take a couple of days and a large stack of blank DVDs. You could copy those files to a computer or even post them on the web. You can do all these things, in a physical sense.
From a legal sense, however, the legality of the above uses is questionable due to the existence of the software license. The license is a contract between you and the software provider that says what you can and can’t do with the software. Proprietary software says you can’t reverse engineer (find out how its made) or disseminate (pass around the code). Open source might say the opposite: you can freely distribute the software, but you MUST include all the code so others can modify it.
Additionally, the license tells you who can install the software (student version can be installed by students), how many times it can be installed (family pack can be installed on three computers in the same household), and what the terms are (personal licenses can’t be used in a corporate environment). Below is a sample portion of a Windows 7 license from Microsoft’s website.
32-bit vs. 64-bit
Computers know what to do based on commands. The terms 32-bit and 64-bit refer to the length of those commands (a bit is a alphanumeric character. Once again, let’s do a little example.
Imagine I am telling you how to navigate around a room blindfolded. I can only tell you a certain amount of the instructions at once before you have to perform my instructions. It wouldn’t be too bad if the instructions were “Turn left.” You would turn left and wait for my next instruction.
Now imagine that I have to give you instructions on how to step over a cord strung across the room but all I can get out is, “Lift your foot thirteen inches high,” at which point you had to lift your leg and hold it there until I finished the next portion, “move your foot forward seven inches,” so you move and wait for, “then place your foot on the ground.” That could get tiring for your legs if you had to do very complex moves. This is the equivalent of 32-bit instructions.
This time we are going to do the 64-bit instructions. In this scenario, I can now say about twice as much information at once. So I can ask you to both lift your foot thirteen inches AND move it forward. It takes much less time because there is less waiting for me to give the next instruction.
One of the major advantages of a longer instruction set is that you can keep track of more information. With 32-bit Windows, you can only use a maximum of 4Gb of RAM in your computer. This is because the computer can only keep track of 2 raised to the 32nd power gigabytes of RAM (2^32= about 4 billion aka 4 gigabytes).
As you can imagine, 64-bit Windows can use a maximum of 2^64 bytes, which is equivalent to a 1 with 19 zeros after it. Don’t worry, its a bunch and you certainly couldn’t afford to buy enough RAM to use it all.
Hardware Requirements
If you think that upgrading is going to mean more speed and a cooler interface, you might want to hold off. If you have a computer purchased in the last year or so, Windows 7 will probably run fairly well on it. If your computer is older than about 3 years, you might have some issues.
The official minimum specifications for Windows are a 1GHz processor (pretty easily accomplished), 20Gb of hard drive space (also pretty easy to do), and lastly 1Gb of RAM for 32-bit and 2Gb of RAM for 64-bit. These last requirements are a the tough part. Even if all these stipulations are met, you might still not get the snazzy graphics if you don’t have a great graphics chip in your computer.
If your computer IS over 3 years old, it is probably best to wait to upgrade until you get a new computer. If you did buy a nicer computer, you can always contact The Digitante to discuss if your PC will be a good candidate for upgrade.
That about covers it
If you have other questions, you can always ask in the comments section. If it your first time commenting, you may have to wait a bit before your comment appears.
In the meantime, you are always welcome to contact The Digitante to discuss any questions you might have about Windows 7 or your computer. You can email me by heading to the About page or you can always call by clicking the Google Voice widget on the right.
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