Time to get over the memory limitation in XP, but not sure to get Win 7 or wait till October (?) for Win 8.

What would you recommend?

You should get win7 and skip win8 altogether imo. Thats what i'm planning to do at least. Just like i stayed with winXP and skipped the whole vista-debacle.

Actually, win7 is pretty good, i'm satisfied with it. Still a system resource hog, but not like vista was.

FWIW, some techs I respect here on campus think Windows 8 will bomb for desktops. I'm very happy with Windows 7 64-bit. Have not had so much as a burp.

Win7 is here now, stable, supported and likely to be usable for another 5 years.

No brainer.

I have been on windows 7 for a couple of years now with no intention of going to 8. Imho go with 7,its been out long enough that its managed to patch up most of it issues.Basically 7 is a stripped down version of vista so i would imagine 8 is a bulked up version of 7.loads more new issues to be sorted out.After all this is microsoft.......... service pack 222 is ready to be installed.....you have 5692 updates available.....

I would go with Windows 7, not a good enough reason to wait for 8 given its not due till October.
Though I do expect Windows 8 to be pretty good and do well, should be nothing like a Vista scenario. There should be no good reason to avoid it when buying a new computer.

I wouldn't recommend you to buy 7 at this moment, even tho I use it and it works fine. I would wait at least until the first week of June, when the Windows 8 Release Preview comes out.

Give it a try then (it's free) and see if you like it. It will probably even be stable enough for you to use it until the final release later this year.

From my experience with the Consumer Preview, Windows 8 is pretty much the same as 7, except there's an extra "metro" UI, that you can easily avoid most of the time (I don't like it for desktop use). So in general I think it should be fine and could have some improvements over 7.

I tried Windows 8 and it offered no improvement whatsoever for DAW work. Project resources and usage were the same as Windows 7, YMMV :

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=343285&postday s=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Win7 now! its hands down the best OS MS has ever put out.

win 8 (played/playing with the beta i dont see it being something we will probably sell unless win7 goes away.

its more for touch screen devices and mobile.
geting it to even behave as a normal OS is a PITA
all the things MS thinks is cool is not at least for a workstation.

Scott
ADK

That's quiet the endorsement... any 2 or three particulars on why?? Especially DAW-wise..

Thanks for the input, leaning toward Win 7 now, but is major bugs really to be expected with every Win release nowadays? Was Win 7 so bad when it came out? From what I can see, Win 7 service pack was mostly (unnecessary) addons more than anything.

Win 7 64-bit has been the best Windows OS I've used. For reference the first one I had was Win 3.0/DOS 3.3. It's far from perfect but it's miles better than XP and less resource intensive than Vista.

Win 8 is still in flux right now. The rumor mill has its release date somewhere in October.

Most music software hardware/software vendors are just starting to support Win 7 across their entire product line -- who knows how long it will be before Win 8 is supported. And on top of that is the questionable future of the new Metro UI/App Store thing.

I'm watching this closely myself. Personally, unless Amazon/Newegg has another killer upgrade deal I'm holding out with Win 7.

8 is the same as 7 but lighter. For touch, when you try to customize your desktop you won't find any advanced appearance settings, only a worthless little option utility. I liked the fact that it didn't have nearly as many processes running, but it was a PITA for desktop use.

Don't know if this has been posted before: Sonar X1 on Windows 8. Just one DAW, maybe a biased test.. but still. As much as I dislike the metro UI part in Windows 8, there could be some good stuff as well.