Well, I ended up downloading and installing the evaluation version of W8. Played around with it for about 40 minutes, seems to work quite well with Reaper and Guitar Rig 5. No problems with latency either. Unfortunately it kept resetting my mouse speed to default which was more than annoying and general navigation felt pretty awkward with the new GUI style. Don't see any benefit of upgrading at this point. ;-) W7 it is for now.
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Windows 7 vs Windows 8
- Thread starter tdf_xi
- Start date
I updated from Vista to W8. I have seen no issues with it using a Presonus Audiobox 22VSL with Reaper. No latency problems at all.
I don't see the fuss about the metro styling either. You can do just about everything is desktop mode. That's how I use it. The whole OS is tailored to touch, though, with the new laptop-tablet hybrids like the MS Surface and these crazy new laptops that fold into a tablet. The tiles thing has been used by Microsoft in their Windows Phones and the Zune, it's a consistency thing, I suppose.
I don't see the fuss about the metro styling either. You can do just about everything is desktop mode. That's how I use it. The whole OS is tailored to touch, though, with the new laptop-tablet hybrids like the MS Surface and these crazy new laptops that fold into a tablet. The tiles thing has been used by Microsoft in their Windows Phones and the Zune, it's a consistency thing, I suppose.
There are several under-the-hood improvements in Win8 too, unlike Win7 (which in many ways was basically Vista SP1 with a more polished UI).
The most obvious Win8 features of interest to DAW customers are official USB 3.0 support and better multi-monitor support.
The USB 3.0 support alone is a solid reason to consider upgrading. You will want it sooner or later, whether to get higher bandwidth external storage devices, or access to (future) low-latency, high-bandwidth recording interfaces.
So far I don't think Microsoft has agreed to back-port the new drivers to Win7, and I doubt they will, so this will be a competitive advantage for Win8. (And trust me, you do not want to use 3rd party USB chipset drivers! You will choke on the incompatibilities and lack of support for devices other than simple mass storage.)
The most obvious Win8 features of interest to DAW customers are official USB 3.0 support and better multi-monitor support.
The USB 3.0 support alone is a solid reason to consider upgrading. You will want it sooner or later, whether to get higher bandwidth external storage devices, or access to (future) low-latency, high-bandwidth recording interfaces.
So far I don't think Microsoft has agreed to back-port the new drivers to Win7, and I doubt they will, so this will be a competitive advantage for Win8. (And trust me, you do not want to use 3rd party USB chipset drivers! You will choke on the incompatibilities and lack of support for devices other than simple mass storage.)
I've been using Win 8 with Sonar X1 and a Motu 8pre, all works very smoothly. Win 8 is faster, uses memory more efficiently and has many improvements over and above the metro UI (which I quite like for apps made to use it.) Microsoft has written extensively on the engineering that went into 8, so check out their site to get the real info on performance and under the cover features. Win 8 on my wife's old laptop runs noticeably faster and saved us from having to get new hardware this year.
If you use your gear professionally, then yeah, I'd be conservative about upgrading from what's working we'll for you, just because that's the smart thing to do. For hackers like me, no worries whatsoever. imho, 8 is probably the best-engineered Windows OS to date.
Cakewalk has some good write-ups on Win8 internals in relation to DAWs on their site that makes pretty interesting reading and gives you a good idea of the kinds of changes that went into this version of the OS, and gives some perspective about MS and it's relationship with the audio industry in general.
By the way, I also have a surface tablet that's pretty darn nice too. Makes that Metro UI sizzle. On my big machine I'm almost always in the desktop, but seriously, it took all of a day to get used to the new start screen. Ymmv, etc.
Edit:
Here's a really good article from Cakewalk that directly addresses the OP's question:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Here's the link to MS's blog on engineering win8. Some of the info is quite technical but you can get the drift.
Invalid Link Removed
If you use your gear professionally, then yeah, I'd be conservative about upgrading from what's working we'll for you, just because that's the smart thing to do. For hackers like me, no worries whatsoever. imho, 8 is probably the best-engineered Windows OS to date.
Cakewalk has some good write-ups on Win8 internals in relation to DAWs on their site that makes pretty interesting reading and gives you a good idea of the kinds of changes that went into this version of the OS, and gives some perspective about MS and it's relationship with the audio industry in general.
By the way, I also have a surface tablet that's pretty darn nice too. Makes that Metro UI sizzle. On my big machine I'm almost always in the desktop, but seriously, it took all of a day to get used to the new start screen. Ymmv, etc.
Edit:
Here's a really good article from Cakewalk that directly addresses the OP's question:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Here's the link to MS's blog on engineering win8. Some of the info is quite technical but you can get the drift.
Invalid Link Removed
