The "realistic" Windows 7 discussion thread

Hey ladies! All the world just turned into Beta testers over night, even those people who didn't master Vista for months and years. So let's have a bit more realistic look on Windows 7 and its improvements for "professional Audio" work.

My own oppinion based on vast Windows experience is that for professional Audio work Windows 7 will not magically improve performance on otherwise bad systems, it may get some slightly more edge out of already good systems by its improved Scheduler.

The main reason for that is that most performance problems are either based on bad hardware drivers (which we RME users are usually spared from) or bad software/DAW implementations. Especially the latter is something that 7 can hardly make better unless it forces developers to write better code by more strict implementation rules. And guess what, that's exactly what Vista did already and hence many developers struggle to properly support it.

Consider this: On my Macbook Pro Ableton Live performs 20-30% worse on OS X compared to Windows eventhough an uncountable number of people claims OS X to be the better OS for Audio/DAW work. So even with the supposely "better Audio OS" the software runs worse. Speculate yourself which one is to be blamed for that and wether Snow Leopard will change anything about Live's performance just by updating the OS!?

Besides: While Microsoft claims that drivers running on Vista should also run on 7 my very first experience with RME Fireface drivers is that Installation fails. That's likely just a problem with the Installer, but it shows that it's not gonna be as hassle-free as Microsoft suggests. That's not a problem for me, but maybe people should stay a bit lower on the hype.

NI Kore drivers on the other hand install without problems, but cannot be configured from inside Ableton Live (you have to run the Configuration App manually). So there will be a timespan where people changing to Windows 7 will experience issues, just like with any other major OS release (albeit one could argue how "major" 7 is away from just a Service Pack release of Vista).