Me ti 7

I recently bought a working laptop with a nice case and all the little gadgets included, mouse, games, etc. for 20 bucks. I figured the case was worth that. Anyway after cutting it on i found that it contained windows me, which is very old. So i wanted to download windows 7 onto it. But it said that i couldnt windows was expecting a newer version of windows, (which is what i was trying to do) before i can download 7. Anyway i can do this without getting a version somewhere between me and 7. Also could i just delete windows me altogether and then instal win, 7??? Thanks for any advice.