Bert Guy
Yo Yoro,
 
Call me an atavistic Luddite if you will, but my DAW still has XP on it. And I like it just fine. (I could be missing out on all kinds of cool functionalities, but I doubt it.) My general purpose laptop I'm on right now is Win7. And I like it just fine for that.
 
My wife had a VISTA machine a while back which I think we left in a dumpster in Louisiana 4.5 years ago.
 
One thing  that I have learned from hard experience (sad to say more than once): never allow upgrades to WINDOWs on a fully functioning DAW!
 
Cheers,
Bert

I happen to quite like W8 on my laptop, but totally agree about XP. I only installed W7 on my DAW PC because of X3. If it would have run on XP I wouldn't have bothered. I also never really liked Vista - it seemed to have a lot of quirks, would often say that things that I had just installed didn't exist and wouldn't even run some software thar was pre-installed on the machine.

Bert Guy
Yo Yoro,
 
Call me an atavistic Luddite if you will, but my DAW still has XP on it. And I like it just fine. (I could be missing out on all kinds of cool functionalities, but I doubt it.) My general purpose laptop I'm on right now is Win7. And I like it just fine for that.
 
My wife had a VISTA machine a while back which I think we left in a dumpster in Louisiana 4.5 years ago.
 
One thing  that I have learned from hard experience (sad to say more than once): never allow upgrades to WINDOWs on a fully functioning DAW!
 
Cheers,
Bert

I agree Bert (nice to see you btw). Still running XP on my DAW (Sonar 8), haven't allowed any Windows updates in 5 years, and use it for the internet all the time, with only a couple of issues that I can remember. Must be lucky I guess..
 
I know I'll have to upgrade sooner or later (if and when I change DAW's), but I'm leaving that as long as possible.

dmbaer
...
Norton? No way in my book.  The worst virus I ever had was Norton Internet Security.  Took a massive effort to get it off my machine.  No Norton for me, ever again.

I won't touch Norton or recommend it. They used to create some serious problems for technical support, like close down your internet connection and not tell anyone, and guess where the customers were calling to get support.
 
Not Norton!

jamesg1213
...
I agree Bert (nice to see you btw). Still running XP on my DAW (Sonar 8), haven't allowed any Windows updates in 5 years, and use it for the internet all the time, with only a couple of issues that I can remember. Must be lucky I guess..
 ...

I don't seem to have any issues with updates. I just don't like the "upgrades" as they intentionally erase all your settings on everything, and it gets really boring otherwise that an upgrade to your shorts, screws up your Network Resolution in Windows! In fact, it's bizarre!

Let me amend something: I will allow neither upgrades nor updates to WINDOWs in a functioning DAW.
 
Bert

craigb
I've learned never to get an even numbered Window's OS.  XP and 7 are good, Vista and 8 not so much...

Kind of the opposite of Star Trek movies.

I had Windows 7, moved to Win 8, and now on 8.1...

Piece of Cake(walk) (see what I did there)

All I do is when it starts I immediately hit the "Desktop" Icon and I'm good to go...
No need for anything else.  File Manager, Internet are in my taskbar...

If I need to launch a program, I go to the start menu...other then that I stay in Desktop view...
again...no need for an additional program.  Once you get it..it's pretty simple.  The problem is it
is "different" out of the gate, and that's where the confusion comes in.  Really, it's the same
on the sub level with new interface.  It is snappier and has been EXTREMELY stable for me,
more so then any previous version of Windows, and I beta tested all of them...

Granted, the DAW and hardware companies are usually late to the table, but it's been solid.
I even have my XP Version of EWQL Symphonic Orchestra (NATIVE-INSTRUMETS VERSION) installed
and it runs flawlessly, both stand alone and as VST 32 bit.

I like it...