Richard's situation is more complex but in some ways similar to mine. I run two XP machines, and 
will continue to for the foreseeable. One is the secondary DAW in the studio (formerly the primary 
DAW). I run XP on that because the last reliable/stable/repeatable version of Roxio disc-burning 
software runs on XP. The new version, now owned by a different company, is awful, unstable and 
doesn't do some of its claimed DVD-authoring features. I also have an older version of Sony Vegas 
and Sony's DVD-authoring software that runs well on XP and I did not want to fool with trying to 
make it run well on W7. That computer also runs Soundforge 9, the last version of Soundforge that 
seamlessly integrated with Sony's CDArchitect software (current versions of Soundforge include a 
stand-alone version of CDArchitect which cannot be accessed and a projected dumped into it directly 
from Soundforge). Finally, that machine has one of the older, super-reliable Plextor Pro optical 
drives in it. That computer continues to be very useful for authoring, duplicating, ripping and 
otherwise working with optical media.

In my home office, the main computer still runs XP. I have a bunch of older programs on it, and 
prefer the older Office interfaces, the older Photoshop setup and the older Outlook Express e-mail 
client. I know I will be forced to "upgrade" out of this world one day, but the computer still does 
these tasks plenty fast, so that day is hopefully many months and years away.

Everything else around here runs W7 except that one computer (now the primary DAW in the studio), 
which runs W10. However, as I said, after hearing Dave's tales of woe, I might swap back in the W7 
drive. As I also said, W7-64 is a fast operating environment for the kinds of things I do. I don't 
prefer the W7 user interface to XP. I find things like navigating and moving files take more steps 
or mouse-clicks, and I prefer the "classic" folders view. As I said, I was an early adopter of 
Windows 95, I learned quickly how to do things efficiently. By the time of Office 2003, they had 
gotten all those apps running fast and almost always crash-free. So I see no need to re-learn any of 
this since I can do what I need to do very quickly and know a bunch of control-key shortcuts. In 
most ways, XP was an ideal system because it brought all the good ideas of the original Windows 
forward, kept things familiar enough, made some things easier and more refined, and finally made the 
old NT-style kernal rock-solid. I understand why they needed to do a bunch of things from scratch 
with Windows 7, but they didn't need to redesign the Office interface, definitely didn't need to do 
all the stupid interface chances with Windows 8 and should spend more time making sure W7, W8 and 
W10 are as rock-solid as XP ended up being.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2015 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Wibdows 10?


> Hi, John,
>
> Your eagle eye was working...as I stated in the other message, Windows XP is very peripheral to 
> the vast majority of my work. I keep it around for my thermal transfer CD/DVD printer. Although I 
> intended to switch to inkjet printable CDs, I haven't had the need to place an order for the 
> blanks yet...my usage of optical media has gone WAY down. I have been able to convince almost all 
> my software...or find substitutes for it...to run on Windows 10. Remember, I've been running 
> Windows 7 since early 2011, and I found that a far more difficult transition. All but one of the 
> W7 and later machines I'm responsible for have been 64 bit. I was very conservative with one 
> friend who does writing and editing, so her first post-XP machine was W7/32. Her second machine 
> was W8.1/64.
> We had 10 W7 and and 2 W8.1 machines in our family of four. The Historical Society I do IT work 
> for has 4 W7 and 1 W8.1 machine and then there is the aforementioned friend with two machines. So, 
> that brings me to 18 post XP machines to care for and worry about.
>
> I have actually done 7 of the 12 machines here. My three towers and two laptops and the two oldest 
> (now surplus) machines when the boys each got an 8.1 laptop as their original primary machine had 
> issues. Issues fixed, older backup machines made surplus. One of those updated has the W10 install 
> on a HD in a drawer and a new HD with Open SUSE Linux on it just for my amusement...I am easily 
> amused.
>
> To complete the picture, I have three "keeper" XP machines. The original 2003 XP machine I bought 
> is the one doing the printer support in the studio. I have a later machine set up as an audio 
> workstation that has been used for massive optical disk burning projects in the past and also for 
> DAT ingest in the past with a second operator. A third machine is kept as a backup for the one in 
> the studio. I have a crummy machine in a nice case and a nice 2004 laptop that was even too slow 
> for Linux, so it stays XP. Those two machines are heading out the door someday soon. The tower 
> probably to recycling and hopefully someone will take the laptop via Kijiji. I also have an HP 100 
> LX and HP 200 LX palmtop DOS computers which I rarely use now.
>
> So, since Microsoft is offering free upgrades until July 29, 2016, I thought I should get started 
> soonish.
> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-10/upgrade-to-windows-10-faq
>
> I first upgraded my "good" laptop (4th gen i5, 8 GB, orig W7 Home Premium) to W10 and was able to 
> use it without a hitch. I researched the drivers for most of my equipment and tried one 
> particularly fussy piece (Nikon Super Coolscan 5000ED/LS5000) on the laptop. All was good.
>
> So, I went ahead and over about a week upgraded the three towers and the workshop laptop. Then I 
> upgraded the two older machines as described above. I was surprised that the little single-core 
> "netbookish" PC ran surprisingly well, but don't ask it to multitask! If you are familiar with the 
> Passmark CPU ratings, the netbookish has a rating about 500 (the same as a Pentium IV 3.2 GHz 
> machine) but the system seems faster (64 vs 32 bits?). The HP that became a Linux machine scores 
> about 1400. The boys' newer laptops and mine score around 4000 as does my ingest desktop. The two 
> other desktops score around 6000 and the W8.1 machine at the Historical Society scores over 10,000 
> and has a boot SSD--it screams. Our other laptops are around 2500.
>
> So with the two spares and my five done, my further deployment will be the boys' pairs over 
> Christmas and my wife's and the five Historical Society machines and my other friend's two in the 
> late winter (Feb-Mar).
>
> It works because we will no longer have the mix of 7 and 8.1 for different users/organizations.
>
> Windows 10 plusses:
> --boots faster
> --resolves some driver/hardware/software issues
>   (one remains unresolved on one of two machines)
> --A superior UI to W8.1 and more like W7 in some respects
> --Improved UI functionality on many fronts
> --quite compatible (I Had to install a new driver to get
>   expected results from a 8-9 year old HP laser printer
>   HP had the driver available (HP P2015dn)
>
> Windows 10 minuses:
> --you actually have to DO IT. Although the upgrade process is
>   automated you still need to go through all the functions and
>   see if anything is not working.
> --A very few programs will not run. I can't recall anything that
>   needed a paid-for license to run. I do recall buying a few things,
>   but don't remember the reason...think it was "nice to have."
> --W7 gadgets won't run, but the performance meters are available as
>   part of 8gadgetpak which runs fine on 10. I use a very cut-down
>   version of just the CPU on the netbook.
>   http://8gadgetpack.net/
>   Seems safe http://bit.ly/1NjsMFp
>   I have used the "suite" from Addgadgets.com which are included:
>   All CPU Meter, Drives Meter, Network Meter plus the Microsoft
>   analog clock, also included.
>
> This is one thing I don't have to worry about until 2025 or so and I won't have to spend money or 
> needlessly dispose of machines in 2020 due to the cost of upgrade then. I might want to, but most 
> of our machines are pretty competent.
>
> As to Microsoft Office, I have been using Libre Office for a while. It is not perfect, but it's 
> good and is being actively developed. We've been under a bunch of pressure to save money at the 
> Historical Society (for good reasons) and I suggested one way to do that on the three new machines 
> we purchased last year was to use Libre Office instead of Microsoft Office. People are adapting 
> well, from what I hear. Unless the boys require an updated version of MS Office, I don't see a 
> reason to go beyond version 2010.
>
> The replacement for Publisher and Visio is more difficult. The Libre Office Draw is a simple 
> drawing program, not Visio, but can be used for many things. Scribus is a full-featured desktop 
> publishing application and having never been a fan of Publisher, I did a project last year in 
> Scribus that worked fine. I don't do enough DTP to warrant keeping InDesign current. I have old 
> versions (pre-CS) and the free CS2 version, but opted for Scribus the last time I needed to do 
> something to make certain that the licensing was valid. (CS2's licensing is a bit iffy if you 
> haven't bought that version, which I hadn't). I like InDesign CS2 better than Scribus, partially 
> because I learned a bunch of things on InDesign. With that said, Publisher 2003 seems to at least 
> open and load a template on W10.
>
> There are Win 9x programs that were written for various digital multimeters that sometimes ran 
> under XP but balk at 64 bit OSs. I don't have any post-XP 32-bit machines here.
>
> The W7 XP 32 bit virtual machine is gone from Windows 10, although my CD printer software did not 
> run under it. My old version of Visio did, but I stopped using that long ago so I wouldn't create 
> more documents. Libre Office spent a lot of time on importing Visio docs to their draw program and 
> I thank them for that. Not perfect,  but good.
>
> That's all I can think of...think I'll turn this into a blog post.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> On 11/29/2015 9:51 AM, John Haley wrote:
>> I noticed in the separate string about "laptop upgrade" (really about
>> external small DAC's), that you, Richard Hess, said you have upgraded most
>> of your computers to Windows 10.  I have been hesitating to do that myself,
>> simply because things are working now the way they are, using various other
>> Windows versions (except XP, which has now unfortunately left the building
>> for me, along with some great programs that I lost).  I don't want to
>> invite trouble, and as we all know, Microsoft is not really our friend.
>> And I have read somewhere online that Windows 10 has had a bug involving
>> hi-def audio files.
>>
>> But if you are using Windows 10 for audio work, Richard, and all is going
>> well, maybe I will do the free upgrades to Windows 10 on all my computers.
>> Microsoft sure wants me to, with all the constant nagging upgrade
>> messages.  That in itself is almost a reason not to.
>>
>> How has your experience been with Windows 10?  Any problems?
>>
>> And others on the list?  Liking it?  Not liking it?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> John Haley
>>
> -- 
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada                             647 479 2800
> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>
>