Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade - Retail Box

With Windows 7 Professional, fewer walls stand between you and your success. You can run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode and recover data easily with automatic backups to your home or business network. You can also connect to company networks effortlessly and more securely with Domain Join. With all the exciting entertainment features of Windows Home Premium, it's a great choice for home and for business.

Easiest Windows to use ever

• Simplify your PC with new navigation features like Aero Shake, Jump Lists, and Snap.
• Aero Shake -- Ever need to cut through a cluttered desktop and quickly focus on a single window? Just click a pane and give your mouse a shake. Voila, Every open window except that one instantly disappears. Jiggle again--and your windows are back. (Who says the old mouse can't learn a new trick?)
• Aero Peek -- Peek gives you the power of X-ray vision, so you can peer past all your open windows straight to the Windows 7 desktop. Simply point to the right edge of the taskbar--and watch open windows instantly turn transparent, revealing all your hidden icons and gadgets.
• Jump Lists -- Jump Lists-new in Windows 7-take you right to the documents, pictures, songs, or websites you turn to each day
• Snap -- Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen.
  Depending on where you drag a window, you can make it expand vertically, take up the entire screen, or appear side-by-side with another window. Snap makes reading, organizing, and comparing windows a...well, you get the picture.
• Customize Windows to look and feel the way you like by changing themes and taskbar programs.
• Easy to network (with or without a server).
• Back up your complete system over a network.
• Backup and Restore
  Backup and Restore--improved for Windows 7--creates safety copies of your most important personal files, so you're always prepared for the worst.
  Let Windows choose what to back up, or pick individual folders, libraries, and drives yourself. Windows can back up files on whatever schedule you choose--just set it and forget it. You can back up to another drive or a DVD. And if you're using the Professional or Ultimate editions of Windows 7, you'll also have the option of backing up your files to a network.

Work the way you want

• Designed to make your PC sleep and resume quicker.
• Takes full advantage of 64-bit PC hardware and memory.
• 64-bit support -- If you've gone PC shopping lately, you've probably noticed more computers with 64-bit processors, and you may have wondered what advantages they offer.
  Put simply, a 64-bit PC can handle larger amounts of information than a 32-bit system. Since it can use more RAM--4 GB and up--a 64-bit computer can be more responsive when you're running lots of programs at once.
• Windows XP Mode gives you the business flexibility you need.
• Windows XP Mode -- It's the best of both worlds: The new Windows XP Mode lets you run older Windows XP business software right on your Windows 7 desktop.
  Designed primarily with small- and medium-sized businesses in mind, Windows XP Mode comes as a separate download and works only with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. Windows XP Mode also requires virtualization software such as Windows Virtual PC. Both are available free on the Microsoft website.

Make new things possible

• Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV with Windows Media Center.
• Windows Media Center -- Watch, pause, and record live TV. Listen to your tunes. Show off your photo collection. Enjoy online entertainment. And do it all from your living-room couch. Is it any wonder critics call Media Center the hidden gem of Windows?
  In Windows 7, we've made it even better--adding great new features (many suggested by you) and visual touch-ups.
• Watch your favorite DVD movies.
• Windows 7 includes a new version of DirectX 11, the software behind the eye-popping 3-D visuals and immersive sound effects found in many of today's PC games.
• Includes integrated video and Dolby audio codecs.

FEATURES

Improved taskbar and full-screen previews
The taskbar at the bottom of your screen is what you use to launch programs and switch between them when they're open. In Windows 7 you can pin any program to the taskbar so it's always just a click away, and you can rearrange the icons on the taskbar just by clicking and dragging. We've made the icons considerably bigger, too, so they're easier to use. Hover over the icons and you'll see thumbnails of every file or window that open in that program, and if you hover over the thumbnail, you'll see a full-screen preview of that window. Move the cursor off the thumbnail and the full-screen preview disappears.

Jump Lists
With Windows 7, we focused on keeping the things you use most right in front of you. One example: The new Jump List feature. It's a handy way to quickly reach the files you've been working with. To see the files you've used recently, just right click on the icon on your taskbar. So right-clicking on the Word icon will show your most recent Word documents. Plus, if there are other files you want to keep handy, you can just pin them to the Jump List so they'll always appear. That way, the documents you're likely to want are just a couple clicks away.

Desktop enhancements
Windows 7 simplifies how you work with the windows on your desktop. You'll have more intuitive ways to open, close, resize, and arrange them.
With Windows 7, it's easier to do things you do all of the time. For example, before, when you wanted to compare two open windows, you had to manually resize your open windows to show them side by side. With Snaps, you can simply grab a window and pull it to either side edge of the screen to fill half the screen. Snap windows to both sides, and it's easier than ever to compare those windows.

Windows Search
Looking for something on your PC? What's your first instinct? If you use the web a lot, you probably start by looking around for a search box. Now, you can find things on your computer the same way. Introduced with Windows Vista, Windows Search helps you find virtually anything on your PC quickly and easily. Windows 7 also makes search results more relevant and easier to understand.

Internet Explorer 8
Available now, Internet Explorer 8 helps you do what you want online, faster. With innovations to the address bar, search, tabs, and the Favorites bar, Internet Explorer 8 brings you more information, with less effort. To start, as you type a search request you'll immediately start seeing relevant suggestions from your chosen search provider, complete with images when available. There are online services you use all the time. Like mapping a location. With Accelerators, you can highlight a bit of information on any page, click on the blue Accelerators icon, and choose from a variety of relevant services. So if you highlight a street address and right click, the Live Maps Accelerator will show a map preview right there on the page.

Better device management
One of the great things about PCs is how they let us use such a wide array of devices. In the past, you had to use several different screens to manage different types of devices. But With Windows 7, you'll use a single Devices and Printers screen to connect, manage, and use whatever printers, phones, and other devices you have on-hand.

HomeGroup
HomeGroup, a new feature in Windows 7, makes connecting the computers in your home a painless process. HomeGroup is set up automatically when you add the first PC running Windows 7 to your home network. Adding more PCs running Windows 7 to the HomeGroup is an easy process. You can specify exactly what you want to share from each PC with all the PCs in the HomeGroup. Then, sharing files across the various PCs in your home--and many other devices--is as easy as if all your data were on a single hard drive. So you can store digital photos on a computer in your den and easily access them from a laptop anywhere in your home. Similarly, once in a HomeGroup, the printer in your den is shared automatically with all of the PCs in your home.

View Available Network (VAN)
Windows 7 makes viewing and connecting to all of your networks simple and consistent. You'll always have one-click access to available networks, regardless of whether those networks are based on Wi-Fi, mobile broadband, dial-up, or your corporate VPN

Windows 7 system requirements

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Additional requirements to use certain features:

• Internet access (fees may apply)
• Depending on resolution, video playback may require additional memory and advanced graphics hardware
• For some Windows Media Center functionality a TV tuner and additional hardware may be required
• Windows Touch and Tablet PCs require specific hardware
• HomeGroup requires a network and PCs running Windows 7
• DVD/CD authoring requires a compatible optical drive
• BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2
• BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive
• Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on
• Music and sound require audio output

Note: Product functionality and graphics may vary based on your system configuration. Some features may require advanced or additional hardware.