Never been an IT person per se, designed sipr and nipr networks for the mil now teach MCAS & Security+ certs to IT people at a local college. Seems like I remember a while back installing audio pro 9 on win 10 pro just to address the differences in the staff view in it vs the one in platinum (one of those staff view threads). If pro audio 9 will run on win 10 what possibly could Microsoft do to stop sonar. On the other hand I'm sure they will think of something. 

Sycraft:
Well that is actually IT being stick-in-the-mud, not a real legit reason. 
 
I'm shure they would be happy to explain to you their reasons. But I'll put my money on W7 anyhow. Like W XP we have a deeper understanding of how to tame it and make it do what we want which is very important if your ONLY using your PC as a DAW. It's certainly a different story for those who use there PC for everything under the sun. 
I'm sort of happy to meet Microsoft halfway and use W 8.1. It never had much of a chance to mature and seems a bridge between W7 and W10. So far everything for the first time since Aug, my Main DAW computer is running 100%. So for me W 8.1 is the best solution to the W10 update issue.. it's solved. 

I am not a pessimist. I am a realist. I see failures happen for me as an IT guy but also for regular people all day every day. New windows, new acrobat, new chrome, etc. I am not saying it will break next week. I am saying to not be surprised when not does and don't be frustrated when you want or need to get something done on that broken system.

I simply have better things to do with my time than to try to fix the unfixable. I already don't get enough time to do what I want and have to live with the fact that there is not talent button on my computer, so things take me longer to do than I would like them to, so why set myself up for failure with something preventable.

I don't care if or how long people opt to stay with sonar. I was just trying to be helpful for people less technical who are reading about how safe everything will be forever. Maybe it will be and good for you if it is. I just don't want to live there.

stxx
It has always been recommended that your music computer be generally disconnected from the internet

Recommended by whom? I didn't think there was any solid consensus on this. 
 
There are a lot of artistic professionals out there who use large, complex software applications in the course of their living. You have designers, film editors, 3D modelers, photographers and many others. Strangely enough, you very rarely hear any of them say that they disconnect their computers from the internet. It's something that I only ever hear from music producers, and of the older generation at that. 
 
I mean you just gotta be sensible about some stuff - don't use wifi, disable things that upload to the cloud in the background (although I've always used CrashPlan without any issues), tell your antivirus to ignore your music related folders, that sort of thing. And then of course it goes without saying, don't be clicking on shady links and clicking on shady .exe's that you've torrented and so on. 
 
Freezing your DAW in time and keeping it offline seems like a lot of unnecessary hassle to me, at least compared to just getting up to speed with a different DAW. 

this happened to cakewalk's plugins last year, who's to say something similar won't happen again? i think sonar will be broken by a win10 update before the authorisation servers go down

and the whole "stay offline" advice just doesn't gel with what software businesses are getting us all to do these days (ie, online authentication etc)
 

Reality is using your Sonar set-up on a computer that never accesses the internet.  Fantasy is leaving it prone to every possible thing that can come along the net by leaving it on a computer that is online.

Studioguy1
Reality is using your Sonar set-up on a computer that never accesses the internet.  Fantasy is leaving it prone to every possible thing that can come along the net by leaving it on a computer that is online.

This implies that your only worry is Windows Updates causing a problem.  You should also be worried about:
 
- The possibility that CW may not being able to give you a permanent authorization when the servers finally get unplugged.  That would mean never being able to reinstall Sonar again.
 
- Some software glitch, like the infamous "Sonar reverts to Demo mode". Once support is completely gone (and I don't know that it isn't gone already) there will be no one to fix it for you. 
 
That means you will have to rely on backup images, and then restore to an earlier point in time and stay there forever... Then you'd better hope nothing triggers an activation glitch (HW failure?) because at some point restoring to the "safe" image may not work anymore either.
 
The IT guys aren't being pessimistic.  We are just more aware of the things that can go wrong.
 
No one is saying "Stop using Sonar".  What we are saying is "At least start on a Plan B for yourself, sooner than later.  Better safe than sorry".

I have thought about this for a few days now and I can see the point.
I guess im one of the lucky ones who is still using Windows 8.1 because I refused to upgrade to that garbage Windows 10 <-Never thought I would say that. I always like to stay advanced with technology, I just couldn't stomach the Windows 10 upgrade. I also have the convenience of taking my Work station off line because I have 2 work stations. One is an I7 the other an I5. So I will keep my I7 off line and use my I5 for learning a new DAW and online work. Great thing is that they are side by side and I have KVM switch so I can use the same mouse and keyboard. 

Not everyone has the luxury or budget to have a separate music computer, or to keep it off-line. Everybody was there at some point when they started out.
 
I remember one day I went to start the Command Center after a win10 update and it wouldn't load. I went looking for information and found the support staff already had a fix/update posted for the windows update that broke it. I never had to contact support because they were on it already. Here's a reminder of a similar incident.
 
(Wouldn't let me post the forum link, but if you want to search for the post, it's dated 10/7/16. [Solved] Command Center Error !!!)
 
I have had other programs broken by Win10 updates and most of them were easily fixed. Then again, I'm an IT guy who also has a background as a software developer, so I have a pretty good understanding of how Windows works internally. The developers at Microsoft can't anticipate every software/hardware combination so it's not a surprise that something will be broken by an update every now and then. But even so, I've still had to scratch my head and wonder how a few things they've put out managed to get released in the first place. They're human too I guess. Could they break Sonar? Not intentionally I'm sure, but it could happen.
 
Also, Yes, the enterprise edition of Win10 has the ability to control updates, but the Home and Pro versions most people use only let you defer them now. There are ways to stop updates, but most folks would not know how or where to find the information, let alone understand some of the instructions on how to truly disable them. Not sure I'd want to do that in the first place anyway. There are reasons for and against, but those will vary by everyone's individual situation. So what's good for one might not be appropriate for another.
 
I have already evaluated two DAWs and chosen a new one to go forward with because I don't want to be dead in the water with Sonar if there's no support for something they had no control over. Hopefully Sonar will live on and continue to work flawlessly for everyone as it has done for me. I'd switch back in a heartbeat if the product is resurrected(well maybe, unless I fall in love with my new choice).
 
And by the way....I do have two dedicated win10-64bit music computers but only one is ever in use at any given time. Both are kept online and both are used to collaborate with others. That wouldn't be as easy if they were isolated from the internet. The second one is more of a mirror of the first in case of a hardware failure - which is another subject if Sonar must ever be re-installed.
 
So has anyone tinkered with running Sonar on a VM?  I'd be curious to know how reliable that would be with external midi devices and what not.