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Windows 7 vs. Windows 8 - my po' XP is getting murdered

I work in IT and I'd say go with Win 7.  Avoid 8 like the plauge IMO, unless you're going to use a mobile/touchscreen device.

That being said, there aren't that many earth shattering differences between the two other than mainly cosmetics/presentation of information.

I loved XP too, and 7 is a worthy upgrade. I liked Vista also, although it got a very bad rap for no reason (other than it wants modern hardware
to run on compared to what XP needed.)

Blah, blah, blah: 7 Good, 8 Bad.

YMMV. ;)

ORC
 
It looks like 7 is the thing to do. I have to have a stable, working setup for work reasons, in fact I have an older computer that has all my boilerplate stuff... which I think I'll keep as-is, it's just writing content - I could get by with Wordpad, if it came to that. And this baby, my soon-to-be-former flame, I'm going to strip out all the non-music content, keep it in XP and try to get much better at computer recording. I already have stuff loaded there that I've hardly touched, a primitive Cakewalk setup & a kindergarden Ableton that came with the Fender FUSE stuff.  but it's ALL I NEED. Full-featured (AKA complicated) is not always better.

But that pup HAS to stay off the internet - the deal is, in April Microsoft is dropping all security patch updating for XP, and apparently the hackers have already started putting on the lipstick & petticoats for the Big Dance - you can hear the drip-drip of the wolves salivating in Czechoslovakia*.... :o :o :o You DO NOT want to go to your bank or tap in a credit card number on XP come summer. And, an amazing number of people will, especially if they've had Windows updates auto-loading on and didn't notice all their previous security patches. That giant sucking sound...

*(Not that I have anything agains... Why some of my best friends are Slobovians & cossacks 'n stuff!) :icon_thumright:
 
Due to the fact that many large corporate/enterprise customers have/were just getting around to upgrading from XP to 7, support for 7 isn't ending any time soon...
 
StübHead said:
Full-featured (AKA complicated) is not always better.

But that pup HAS to stay off the internet

You got both of those right.

I've got a full-featured Cubase here that I can't make heads or tails of. Then everybody tells me not to bother - get ProTools - but then what? Same thing. If you're not a well-experienced recording engineer, a lot of that stuff makes no sense at all. It's not intuitive in the least.

I did buy a couple books on digital recording, particularly with Cubase, and one of the first things they say is to not even hook the network interface up, lest you be tempted to cruise the dreaded interwebs. Windows and the internet do not mix well if you want to maintain any kind of data integrity.
 
Cagey said:
StübHead said:
Full-featured (AKA complicated) is not always better.

But that pup HAS to stay off the internet

You got both of those right.

I've got a full-featured Cubase here that I can't make heads or tails of. Then everybody tells me not to bother - get ProTools - but then what? Same thing. If you're not a well-experienced recording engineer, a lot of that stuff makes no sense at all. It's not intuitive in the least.

I did buy a couple books on digital recording, particularly with Cubase, and one of the first things they say is to not even hook the network interface up, lest you be tempted to cruise the dreaded interwebs. Windows and the internet do not mix well if you want to maintain any kind of data integrity.

Considering that Microsoft will stop releasing patches for XP this year, it will be unwise to connect an XP machine to the internet.

BTW Cagey, I used to run a recording studio (now I have a personal studio) and you may want to try Reaper. It's a very good DAW, and free (until you get annoyed by the nagware-startup) and very inexpensive to buy if you decide you like it. It can use VST plug-ins as well. I've been using it for years and it keeps getting better and better.
http://www.reaper.fm/
 
Here's an interesting question then.

I literally got a new Toshiba Sattelite series at Best Buy less than 48 hours ago, loaded with 8.whatever.

Is 7 even an option for me?
 
TonyFlyingSquirrel said:
I literally got a new Toshiba Sattelite series at Best Buy less than 48 hours ago, loaded with 8.whatever.

Is 7 even an option for me?

In most cases the answer to this is yes, if you want to start from scratch without any of the previously installed apps. In most cases, downgrading an OS requires reformatting and/or repartitioning the drive. Win7 may play nice and let you install it next to Win8, but usually you need to create a new bootable partition to do that and I would encourage you not to attempt it if you don't have experience with installation and upgrades.

If you don't mind starting from scratch you can install a fresh copy of Win7 and then go from there, but you probably won't have the extra software (Office, et.al.) that came with the laptop to start with.

I don't see any reason that you couldn't downgrade the OS if yours is anything like this one:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-satellite-15-6-laptop-4gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-satin-black/2284016.p?id=1219071847334&skuId=2284016&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=2284016&extensionType={adtype}:{network}&s_kwcid=PTC!pla!{keyword}!{matchtype}!{adwords_producttargetid}!{network}!{ifmobile:M}!{creative}&kpid=2284016&k_clickid=1b7c8324-b90b-1908-e2e2-000058310d0e
 
Some Windows 8 licensens comes with downgrade rights to Win 7

http://www.microsoft.com/OEM/en/licensing/sblicensing/Pages/downgrade_rights.aspx
 
I have Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1. Rock solid.
But it's 32 bit & there's a lot of stuff that's 64 bit coming onto the market for music & I will have to upgrade.
Not at all keen on Windows 8. Those tiles may do great on smaller tablets & phones but up on big screens it simply looks amateurish. Not going touch screen either as I may find my software for music orphaned (though some development in touch screen apps in music software is happening).

So my only advice, there's already a heap[ of more qualified folks chiming in, is to consider 64 bit if you do upgrade.
 
number one advantage to 64 bit is support for more than 3gigs of ram or so... but you have to have a 64 bit processor.. not that that is uncommon or anything. but if  it's just an upgrade for an old computer then who knows. the only modern processors that might not be 64 bit are low wattage or economy processors.
 
Once again, download ClassicShell and you don't have to use the new Win8 interface:

http://www.classicshell.net/

It's free, works perfectly, gives you back the Start Menu and makes 8 work like you want it to without frustration.
 
drewfx said:
Once again, download ClassicShell and you don't have to use the new Win8 interface:

http://www.classicshell.net/

It's free, works perfectly, gives you back the Start Menu and makes 8 work like you want it to without frustration.

since we are discussing alternative shells, kde is being developed for windows. it is my choice on linux though it is a little resource heavy. i just like that i don't have to spend hours settign up compiz/fusion on gnome to do the window7 like things such as snap to full screen or half screen (it also does quadrants which windows does not.) kde is very windows like with some things common to linux shells as well such as multiple work spaces. the developers for kde are also the developers of a browser(it's not just a web browser it's a file browser and works with local drives as well as network drives) called konquerer that is the orriginal use of "Webkit" so yeah, webkit is not an apple thing, and if it wasn't for kde we wouldn't have safari or chromium/chrome. but now konquerer has a new renderer that may not work with every website, and you might need to fiddle with it to revert it back to webkit... 

but for windows i used to use wez's evil shell... i don't know if he updated it for windows 8 or not. but it's about as minimal as you can get but still has full functionality. it has a launch bar like mac or ubuntu, but it's on the right not the botom or left. it has a little animation to tell you the program is running open but minimized and there is a persistent search/run bar.. who ever this guy is, he was distributing this interface for years on windows and now it's where the linux interfaces are going with search based program launching and common program bars, only wez's evil shell is/was about as light weight as they get and the stupid ubuntu unity and gnome3 interfaces are resource hogs and are completely unusable with old computers i run mint or xp on.

http://windows.kde.org/

http://evildesk.wezfurlong.org/docs.php (just noticed this hasn't been updated since 2007... has it been that long since i used windows??)
 
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