Drop XP & Vista support for 64bit?

infuzion · 3 Aug 2011

My reasoning: I want to sell VSTs, preferably to people with money. I want to make sure I can have 64bit, which is starting to become mandatory. Though the computer I spend 99% of my time on is WinXP dual-core, I do have a i7 laptop with Win7_64 just waiting to be used. If I wanted to have 100,000 downloads of free VSTs, I could just use an old version of SM.

Here are some threads about NI dropping XP support: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=325069 http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... p?t=145294

trogluddite · 3 Aug 2011

Not for me. On a personal level, I will upgrade things because they offer me a more rewarding experience, but will do my best to resist doing it just to make M$ et al a load more bucks. I use XP, Vista and Win7 on various machines at work - and I just can't stand what M$ have done to their OS - I'd still be using Win98 if I could. In nearly 16 years of having a PC in my home, I've only ever had 3 machines, and my previous one is still doing useful work.

For OutSim/DSProbotics. Commercially, I think their interests are best served by supporting more OS, not fewer - including mobile devices etc. IMHO, their biggest business limitation is that they are too 'niche'. They will only win the investment they need to expand (thereby taking much of the load off Malc's shoulders) if they can propose to investors ways to reach a wider audience with their products - as they have tried to do (albeit not very successfully so far) by 'porting' their technology to the education/robotics market with FlowStone.

infuzion · 4 Aug 2011

trogluddite wrote: I'd still be using Win98 if I could

Now you are trying to pick a fight here! 😉 WinXP is are more secure, faster & stable. I can see people not be too excited about Win7 (aside from native multitouch & WDML), but Win98se? Kidding, right?

Honestly, if it came between supporting WinXP & supporting OSX, I say drop WinXP like a hot potato!

trogluddite · 4 Aug 2011

Guess I'm a bit old school! 😉 For me the OS is just a box to put my applications in and hook them to my hardware -I don't want it to DO anything - ideally, I want one that doesn't pop up an 'are you really, really, really sure about that?' box every ten seconds - my colleagues at work are tired of hearing me mutter "If hadn't wanted to do that...." all day!

TomC · 4 Aug 2011

trogluddite wrote: ideally, I want one that doesn't pop up an 'are you really, really, really sure about that?' box every ten seconds - my colleagues at work are tired of hearing me mutter "If hadn't wanted to do that...." all day!

Are you really sure that you are not me?

(I have to check what I do during my sleep...)

Tom

rl · 4 Aug 2011

I had a hard time moving my home studio to a 64 bit windows 7. I had to change hardware (If anyone is interested in my good old Tascam US-428, send me a note...) because of lacking drivers, some plugins and instruments especially from the bigger companies won't install or run on windows 7 (the NI service center application is driving me crazy), even when only used with a 32 bit sequencer, only a subset of VSTi's exists for native 64 bit, for some I have to buy upgrades, etc...

If I had a commercial studio where money matters a working environment would be more important than everything else. So I would stick to goode ole XP as long as possible (and maybe build a 2nd 74 bit system for parallel usage).

64 bit SM would be a great thing, but I wouldn't mind if a 32 bit SM would run in a 64 bit host using some clever thunking or bridging technique, at least I haven't seen a SM build plugin that needs serveral Gigabytes of RAM.

I personally still don't see the need for a 64 bit sequencer application, except when using huge sample libraries.

Oh, and I recently heard that MAC users are facing similar problems when switching to LION...