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which 64-bit windows OS should i use - XP or W7?


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so, i'm in the process of building an offline-only windows-based pc solely for music creation. i'm trying to decide if it's worth going the w7 64-bit route, or if xp 64-bit would be fine.

i know that xp's 64-bit distro was really buggy, but it's also incredibly lightweight - under 200mb at any given time. it also runs anything created for music, ever - i've got several VSTs that have never functioned properly on w7 (the steinberg virtual guitars, for example, don't install on w7). my main worry is that w7 is definitely what is being developed for, and i don't want to have to reinstall all this stuff down the line just because everything in a year or two starts requiring w7. but i don't know if i want to lost a gigabyte or more to the OS itself. with a 64-bit box i guess it won't matter as much, but it'd be nice to not worry about it.

what do you think? i've got a 64-bit copy of w7 sitting around, and it shouldn't be tough to get the copy of xp if i decide to go that route. basically i'm asking if anyone's got experience with xp 64-bit, and if they think that my fears about bugs and crashes are unwarranted.

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win xp, if you wana run games, then win 7

Did you not read his post at all? Did you COMPLETELY miss the part where he said "i'm in the process of building an offline-only windows-based pc solely for music creation". You know... the FIRST LINE!

anyways, I don't really have any experience with xp x64, but I'd personally suggest w7. Its where things are headed, and it probably makes more sense to go with the flow. Ive been using w7 x64 for a while now, and its been pretty good for me, and hopefully the stuff that doesn't work on w7 now, will get patched down the road.

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Did you not read his post at all? Did you COMPLETELY miss the part where he said "i'm in the process of building an offline-only windows-based pc solely for music creation". You know... the FIRST LINE!

anyways, I don't really have any experience with xp x64, but I'd personally suggest w7. Its where things are headed, and it probably makes more sense to go with the flow. Ive been using w7 x64 for a while now, and its been pretty good for me, and hopefully the stuff that doesn't work on w7 now, will get patched down the road.

im sure you can game offlines as well.

and w7 is cant support as meny things as w7.

I run winxp then i dual boot win 7, but i mostly work and stay on winxp :P

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so, i'm in the process of building an offline-only windows-based pc solely for music creation. i'm trying to decide if it's worth going the w7 64-bit route, or if xp 64-bit would be fine.

i know that xp's 64-bit distro was really buggy, but it's also incredibly lightweight - under 200mb at any given time. it also runs anything created for music, ever - i've got several VSTs that have never functioned properly on w7 (the steinberg virtual guitars, for example, don't install on w7). my main worry is that w7 is definitely what is being developed for, and i don't want to have to reinstall all this stuff down the line just because everything in a year or two starts requiring w7. but i don't know if i want to lost a gigabyte or more to the OS itself. with a 64-bit box i guess it won't matter as much, but it'd be nice to not worry about it.

what do you think? i've got a 64-bit copy of w7 sitting around, and it shouldn't be tough to get the copy of xp if i decide to go that route. basically i'm asking if anyone's got experience with xp 64-bit, and if they think that my fears about bugs and crashes are unwarranted.

I have used both, and this is my feeling:

Windows 7 x64, Windows XP x86.

You don't need dual boot nonesense.

Windows 7 x64 works great.

I liked Windows XP x64 a lot and yeah, lightweight it was! It's best feature was how smooth, stable, and quickly it ran.

But there is almost no friggin' audio hardware support for Windows XP x64.

It's nigh impossible to find decent XP x64 drivers and hardware support is it's biggest weakness--and really, that's one of the most important things for a musician, more than almost any other discipline.

Windows 7 x64 works great. I am happy with it and I have not looked back at all.

You just know, as any smart computer dude must, that you click advanced installation settings and you install only the things you want to and then uninstall whatever default stuff you don't.

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Yeah just to expand on my email in more detail, I've generally found Win7 Pro 64 to be far more stable and reliable than Xp64. It uses more RAM, but when you have 12gb it doesn't really matter. The multicore processing is better overall, and most importantly, new drivers/software are all for Win7. Kontakt 4 didn't install properly for me on XP64 and it took several calls to find an NI rep who would help me. Officially, they don't support Xp64 at all, which is a big problem. I also had more issues with Spectrasonics plugins on XP64.

On the other hand, I can think of only one plugin that behaves a bit weird in 7-64, which is ArtsAcoustic Reverb in FL. It's very laggy for some reason when the UI is open, a problem that apparently happens in other DAWs too. Go figure.

Short answer: 7 all the way, IMO.

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