Cakewalk abandon's XP? Makes decision against upgrade easy

I'm not really sure what Cakewalk means by their statement:

XP and Vista are no longer officially supported. Future updates will not be compatible or install on XP and Vista as they are no longer officially supported.

"officially supported" and "future updates will not be compatible" implies that it works now, but you'll have to upgrade your OS later if you want your purchase to work.

First, one can't argue that Vista is done, nor fault Cakewalk for not wanting that OS on any of their development / testing machines. But XP is a different story. A working OS. I've never seen my CPU meters (quad core) pegged with X1 or version 8.

Maybe I'm a luddite, but my PC is working fine. I don't want to buy a new PC or Windows7 or Windows8. Without a doubt, Microsoft fanboys will flame me, as they did when people scoffed at Vista. Free country, worship any OS or DAW you choose. I'm just not going to sign up for unnecessary abuse.

Cakewalk, you've just given me the antidote to GAS that I needed. The excuse for my wallet not to upgrade.

I can stay with Sonar version 8, and my mostly unused X1 install on my perfectly working XP machine. Ubuntu is calling as the audio apps improve and drivers become more available. I won't sign up for Microsoft abuse.

But that is just me, I'm certainly eccentric. Just thought that your product managers should know, as you evaluate your X2 sales that your abandonment of XP might be factor in your results. But your abandonment of Vista probably is not. My opinion.

Fanboys of M$ are hereby invited to flame away. Ad hominem attacks against backward folks like me who would have sent their upgrade funds for the "latest" update may address that paradox as they choose. I'm going to duck and run to some Ubuntu sight 'cause I know it's going to get hot around here.


Thanks for being the best paid DAW on windows while it lasted. Sorry that you think only 7 and 8 are worthy. And let your users know if you change your mind and decide to continue support of XP.

I suggest you re-edit that within chrome browser perhaps ;)

you do pro audio/video/anim etc.. it's a taken you need a decent pc with a decent amount of "grunt" normally with the latest OS (normally say 3-4 years) .. either upgrade or stay where you are.. not like it will stop working is it?

why mention "nix" OS , all the audio products I use only support windows.. if that wasn't the case then maybe I'd switch more to "nix" OS. They aren't... so I don't switch...

remember the BIG part of software dev.. is actually maintenance .. how many folk can buy XP now ? how many can buy vista currently ? ... 

so they are forced to support O/S's that are REALLY different enough.. and remember the life cycle for a pc "normally" is 4 years. If you program and deal with music stuff then you get why there is a cut off point. 

so come on cakewalk.. why aren't you still supporting MS-DOS 3.1 !!! huh ?

remember xp is officially finished as of 2014 june IRC ? what rig are you using to be using XP? try running U-he diva on it.. see how far you get... you either upgrade or stay with things as they are... remember this stuff is all "licenses" now.. no the actual product.

is a decent pc that expensive now ? is the state of how an OS is upgraded etc in control of cakewalk ? 

this isn't the 1980's and and it's not the atari ST with c-lab / cubase.. times have moved on my friend.

I haven't been reading the Cakewalk forum on a regular basis. I'm sure Cakewalk has their reasons, perhaps determined in part by their business contracts with Microsoft.

I'm just letting Cakewalk know why I'm getting off the upgrade path. They deserve that piece of bus intel after treating me fairly since the DOS days.

And to the prior poster, sure you can buy XP today. XP also runs very stable within a virtual machine, which in turn runs very well on an 8 core running Unix. Why run Windows as your boot OS, when it seems you only need it for applications? All this effort to image your drive, when you can just save the entire state of your application specific machine as a file. Seems kind of luddite thinking to me. But to answer your question, that is why I bring up 'nix. So easy to install it as your virtual machine host. Couple CPUs for a dedicated Windows DAW with exclusive use of specific USB audio devices, and complete isolation from the internet connection in another virtual machine instance running nix or whatever.

Hey, I learned how from someone else. At work you used to spend forever upgrading your Unix server to simultaneously serve eMail, file server, print server, web server, authication server, database server, etc. Now you just have a base machine with a virtual machine "appliance" doing one thing only. Easy to configure. Some actually move those appliances to the cloud. Why when you can buy an 8 core screaming PC for a grand? Sorry to digress.

Good luck to all.

Whatever works for you. You really can make music with so many different hardware/software configurations. 

I do think your bitterness against Microsoft is a bit harsh though. XP came out in 2001. In technology years that makes it ANCIENT. Think back to when XP first came out- Apple was yet to release OS X.

I really think there have been enough refinements in both hardware and software since then to make the upgrade worth it, but if you're happy where you are that's great!

Peace,

Tunes

Bub


The posts are long in this thread, and I admit, I haven't read through them all.

One thing I will chime in on, and my apologies if anyone has said this already, but ... as far as I can tell, Vista and Windows 7 are the same engine. I see no reason why Sonar will not run on Vista. XP, I can understand, but as long as they support Windows 7, I see no reason why Vista can't be supported.

There aint that much difference between Win 7 and Vista SP2, I have computers running both. But apparently some of the touch screen features that will be added in the Win 8 patch are only compatible with Windows 7 and 8.
 
Vista had a bad launch and the reputation stuck long after the issues had been resolved.  64 Bit Vista SP2 is a very good operating system, much more capable than XP.
 
 

Software projects have budgets. Every OS officially supported amounts to time spent. Time is money. Software developers have to make decisions regarding time and money. Letting go of outdated OS's seems like a pretty reasonable budget decision to me. It frees up time and money for other things. 

OK . . . I'm an XP user.
Sonar X-1 has run great on my XP box (with obvious limitations), but I can take the Cakewalk hint . . . dont' upgrade to Sonar X-2 on XP.

No . . . they're not going to get my upgrade money right now, but when I inevitably buy my Windows 7 box, eventually they will get my upgrade money. Technology moves, no escaping that.  The Cakewalk idea to abandon XP support had to happen sometime.

I watched Sonar Seth's video about the X-2 changes. I like it. I want it . . . but all that new complicated software programming can't happen with Win Xp's 3GB RAM limitation. End of story. Some of the best songs ever written were on 4 track tape machines, but that's gone too.

I think the upgrade to Win8 is $40, if your computer can handle it; if it can't you should stick to 8.5.3 and accept that future programs are probably not going to be made to run on your XP machine.

Technology moves, no escaping that. The Cakewalk idea to abandon XP support had to happen sometime.

 
So true...    And from what Noel wrote on another thread, it's because the Windows DLLs are not backwards compatible with WinXP.   So either CW has to remove XP from the list, or they'd have to continue development and support of WinXP independently of Win7/8.  Which puts Win7/8 users at a disadvantage when it comes to the number of fixes and enhancements going forward...and I'd imagine they are the larger group at this point.    So it makes perfect IMHO sense to stick with what works until you can make the move to a newer OS.   Heck... and for some, that *is* X2.

dance_lets@yahoo.com

...XP is a different story. A working OS. I've never seen my CPU meters (quad core) pegged with X1 or version 8.

Maybe I'm a luddite, but my PC is working fine...

Same here.  I'm still using XP and Sonar 7PE and not in any particular hurry to move up yet.  I have an installation of Windows 7 64-bit in a separate partition ready to migrate to at some point in the future, but not everything works properly there yet.  I've got great performance and stability on my current setup so there's no strong motivation to change, other than keeping up with fashions.