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I suspect you are right about running audio on a VM, Arthur. It would be fun
to try it. For playback only, it might be okay.

OTOH, if legacy apps are a priority, I would encourage a step into Win 7,
while it is still young enough to have a lifespan. Depending on the age of
the machine, it might run 7 okay with the addition of some RAM. It's a very
good product, a worthy follow on of XP, which was also excellent. Like all
OS advances, it demands more resources than the previous generation, but
that seems more relevant to memory than to processor speed. If it's a 32-bit
machine, it can still serve well in an office with 4 Gigs of ram, at which
point you have about the same resources available to apps as on XP with 2.
My DAW is a 5 year old 2-core AMD 64 machine of no great spec. It started
out with XP, migrated to 64-bit Win 7 with 2 Gigs of memory and it worked
okay. It is much happier running plugins with 8 Gigs, and it is fine for
moderate track count and no cares about latency. I wouldn't try to record a
band on it - too slow for that. My office machine is essentially the same
thing and it works great. If the machine doesn't do 64-bit and you need
power, however, you've stuck with a bigger decision.

Anyway, Win8 isn't totally evil. I read that with the service pack that's
coming out, they'll reintroduce the Start button. Yea! I helped a friend
migrate to it last winter. The first hours were not fun. Once I found
something I wanted, and then went away and tried to go back, I couldn't find
it again. But, once you learn the way to the desktop, it starts to be more
familiar, and then it's just learning the new navigation concept. The less
you know about old Windows, the easier it probably is. Maybe Andy already
knows it.

Andy! Tell us more about what apps you are running, please.

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Arthur Gaer
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 4:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Audio workstation recommendations?

Well, if you moved to Macs you could run WinXP in a virtual machine
(Parallels Desktop, my preference, or VMWare Fusion) on the Macs themselves
and thus still have access to the XP software running on a "real" WindXP
operating system.

There's still the danger that the virtual XP could have security compromises
as well.  At least the virtual machine isn't sitting directly on the network
and you can throw up various levels of protection between the virtual XP and
the outside world as well.  You can also create frozen images of a known
working system/software combination, so if the machine ever does get
infected with malware or otherwise get trashed, you can roll back to a known
working set OS/software combination.

All that being said, I wouldn't count on using WinXP within a Mac virtual
machine as a reliable way to do high quality audio and other real time sorts
of operations.  There's just way too much going on between that older OS and
its virtual access to the actual Mac hardware to depend on that working to
professional standards.  Though for less hardware dependent and real time
applications, like MS Office, etc it seems to work just fine.

Arthur

On Jul 16, 2013, at 3:38 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Yes, agree about being FORCED to "upgrade" when Microshaft stops doing
security updates. At both the studio and my other company, we're not sure
what we're going to do, but we already know we'll now have to budget lots of
money for needless computer changes in 2014. There is very serious thought
and talk about just moving to Mac, the idea being that Microsoft has now
diverged from our best interests. What we'll do about legacy XP software is
anyone's guess.
> 
> -- Tom Fine
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Arthur Gaer" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 2:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Audio workstation recommendations?
> 
> 
>> Hi Tom,
>> 
>> If you or anyone is still using WinXP you should really try to be rid of
it within the next nine months. That's when Microsoft will remove all
support, which most importantly means security support, for XP:
>> 
>> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx
>> 
>> "After April 8, 2014, there will be no new security updates, non-security
hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content
updates..."
>> 
>> If anyone's XP equipment talks to a network in any way, you'll want to
replace it, upgrade the OS, or keep it entirely disconnected from the
Internet from that time forward.  I can only imagine the security holes the
hacker community is keeping in their pockets until April 9, 2014.  You
really don't want to find out what those might be.
>> 
>> Personally I'm also a big advocate of Macs as well, enhanced security
being one significant benefit.
>> 
>> On Jul 16, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>> 
>>> To be honest, if I had the funds to get rid of all the legacy WinXP
aspects of my studio, I'd go Mac today.
>> 
>> Arthur Gaer
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 
>> Senior Systems Manager
>> Harvard University
>> Department of Mathematics
>> Science Center
>> 1 Oxford Street
>> Cambridge, MA 02138
>> 617-495-1610
>>