paulo
Has there been any official information anywhere about how long CW will continue to support win7 in regards to this ? I would be a very unhappy bunny if I bought it and an update any time soon removed compatabillity with W7.
I don't think Cakewalk is in a position to give definite info about continued support, because much of that depends on Microsoft. Microsoft's Windows mainstream support ended in January 2015, although security updates will happen until January 2020. Realistically, that's only 3 years away. So whether you want to or not, at some point you'll need to be assimilated into the W10 borg.
FWIW I avoided updating for as long as I could, but eventually
had to update because if I wanted to test anything, most of SONAR's user base was on W10. I updated
over W7 - no clean install - and it worked so well that within a month I'd updated my other two computers. And if you've been doing the W7 updates, your OS is pretty close to W10 anyway...similarly to how if you did all the Vista updates, you ended up with something that was essentially Windows 7.
The September 2016 eZine has analytic info on the most-used operating systems with SONAR. 64-bit Windows 10 has a 3:1 lead over 2nd place, which is Windows 7 64-bit. Logic would indicate that Cakewalk would be loathe to orphan that many users. The same analytics show there are people still running SONAR on 32-bit Vista. "Supporting" and "running on" are two different things. I have Windows 95 software that hasn't been supported since Windows 98, but it still runs fine.
It's hard to imagine SONAR not running on Windows 7 if you "freeze" your system in a working state. But if Microsoft makes a change in 10 that renders 10-compatible programs incompatible with 7, Cakewalk will have no choice but go along.
Looking here at the reaction to the last two updates in particular, I don't think I want it anywhere near my pc right now
The 2016.12 update's official release was 12/20, and here we are 3 days later with updated plug-ins and reports are good. I just wait a while before updating and have yet to be bitten by an update. The only update I've skipped was 2016.11 because I'd seen problem reports. So I stuck on 10 and all was well. Now I'm on 12, and no problems. I don't understand why people download an early access version in the middle of a mission-critical project...but overall, I would hate to give up what's in Platinum and go back to X3. Just the speed/efficiency improvements alone make a big difference, and I've become dependent on Mix Recall, Aux Tracks, and Patch Points.
which leads me to the next question...If I bought the lifetime updates, is there any date that I would have to activate it by ? Is there any reason I couldn't keep it aside and install/activate at some point in the future when it's reasonably stable ?
What matters for LTU is the purchase date, NOT the activation date. So no worries there.