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So I'm gonna buy me a new Macbook pro which comes pre installed with either Windows XP or Vista. Having never dealt with Windows to any large extent my question is to Windows users, which system should I go with? It's only going to be used for music applications. Any advice?Elser

well, for what its worth...50% of why I switched platforms from PC to Mac was because I really didn't like Vista. On a brand new dual core machine with 2 gigs of ram it ran extremely slow. And I mean slooooooow. Start up was slow, browsing, opening word documents, etc. I've heard of a lot of problems with drivers too, but those issues might be all cleared up by now.If you are a Mac guy, you will definitely notice a few things in Vista that MS blatantly lifted from OSX which you might like. However, they kind of missed the point as the functionality of what they copied isn't quite up to par with its OSX counterparts IMHO. A good example of that is the expose feature in OSX. Vista has something like it, but you can't see all of the windows at one time...it displays all of your windows like a rolodex and you have to shuffle through them to find what you are looking for. And if you miss the window you were looking for by 1 then guess what...you have to cycle through EVERY single one again. So its like a pointless toy really. I would personally go with XP. There are a few devout vista supporters, but in general I would say that most people don't like Vista too much. XP is pretty solid though. I of course prefer OSX over them all, but XP doesn't frustrate me like Vista.Thats my 2 cents.-Steve

I got a new machine around Christmas and debated over whether to make the Vista switch at that time or wait. Since I was loading everything from scratch I went with a clean Vista install to avoid a potentially troublesome XP to Vista "upgrade" later down the road. It's been an OK experience. There's nothing in Vista where I can say "WOW!" to encourage you to get it but nothing so terrible as to discourage you either . Other than... get lots of RAM. The Vista development team apparently wasn't concerned with elegant coding for minimal resource usage. It takes 500-700mb of RAM just sitting there doing nothing. Generally, neither XP nor Vista recognizes anything over 2.8gb of RAM without going 64-bit. I got 4gb because of the possibility of going 64-bit pretty soon.One thing I wouldn't suggest is an "upgrade" from XP to Vista. A clean Vista install has enough issues on it's own. So in the end, the only reason I'd say to get Vista is to avoid that "upgrade" later. But I probably only lean 50.1% in that direction as opposed to 49.9% in the direction of "get XP and worry about any upgrade when the time comes". Hope that's clearer than the way it looks to me when I read it back to myself. Dave

I'm not a big Windows guy or a big Windows fan. I recently picked up a 64 BIT XP machine to run the East West PLAY orchestra on (which I just received but have not installed yet) and so far that machine has run 32 bit Kontakt 3 just fine. I don't use it for a DAW, though.I would strongly recommend that you keep the Windows side of this Mac for music ONLY and never connect it to the internet while the Windows side is running. Do all your internet based stuff on the Mac side and keep the Windows side pristine and offline.My brother in law, who has been a Windows user since the beginning very recently got fed up with having to have all the anti-virus software on his Windows machine and waiting many minutes for it to boot up because of all the extra stuff to protect it online. He bought an iMac and is really loving it and no worries about viruses, etc.I'm not trying to start a Mac vs PC war, just a heads up that even though that machine has an Apple logo on it, when it's running Windows, it's an internet crap magnet just like any other Windows machine on the planet!!Mazz

Thanks guys, Mazz, ya I had already considered the virus thing and your right on, no platform war here but the legacy speaks for itself. The windows thing is really just an interesting diversion, I'm sure I'll be doing most of my work in OSX.Dave, yer funny, it doesn't read any clearer than what you stated, but thanks.On a related but separate note, I'm planning to upgrade the hard drive to a 7200rpm drive. Hitachi makes a few and I'm trying to decide between a 320GB or a 250GB drive. Price is'nt really an issue, there both affordable, but which will perform better? I've heard theories that the bigger drives perform better, but that goes against my intuition whichsays less space to search on would equal more efficiency. Any thoughts?

I wouldn't mess with the internal drive. You don't want to use that for anything but apps, word docs and the OS anyway.I'd get a couple of screaming little portable Firewire external drives from someone like Other World Computing. They can be bus powered and are not noisy at all. If you're getting a MacBook Pro then you should have plenty of Firewire bandwidth to go around. Put some samples on one drive and use the other for audio files.http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire ... oSeriously, you don't want to run your audio and samples off the same drive your OS and apps are on.Mazz

Aug 5, 2008, 4:53pm, fretnoise wrote:So I'm gonna buy me a new Macbook pro which comes pre installed with either Windows XP or Vista. Having never dealt with Windows to any large extent my question is to Windows users, which system should I go with? It's only going to be used for music applications. Any advice?ElserAs computer tech (my daily job until I get enough from music) always go for the latest and here are the reasons:1. Latest (Vista) will provide you with future support for updated plugins, VST, DAW software.2. Vista supports multiple cores better and is not limited like windows XP with his 32 bit design, (vista runs at 64 bit if your machine comes with a 64 bit CPU) = can allocated more RAM and RAM is what you need when running multiple tracks, processes, plugins, etc.3. You get updates and better fixes with the latest version. (don't worry if people tell you vista will give you headaches; the reason for this is people try to run old software with a newer OS.Any more question about Windows related PC just drop me a line!

Aug 26, 2008, 2:15pm, sirj wrote:Aug 5, 2008, 4:53pm, fretnoise wrote:So I'm gonna buy me a new Macbook pro which comes pre installed with either Windows XP or Vista. Having never dealt with Windows to any large extent my question is to Windows users, which system should I go with? It's only going to be used for music applications. Any advice?ElserAs computer tech (my daily job until I get enough from music) always go for the latest and here are the reasons:1. Latest (Vista) will provide you with future support for updated plugins, VST, DAW software.2. Vista supports multiple cores better and is not limited like windows XP with his 32 bit design, (vista runs at 64 bit if your machine comes with a 64 bit CPU) = can allocated more RAM and RAM is what you need when running multiple tracks, processes, plugins, etc.3. You get updates and better fixes with the latest version. (don't worry if people tell you vista will give you headaches; the reason for this is people try to run old software with a newer OS.Any more question about Windows related PC just drop me a line!The main reason I avoided Vista when getting my audio computer built last year is.... most of the programs I use for production will not work with it. So look at the programs you intend to run before you make your choice.

Neither. I'm not being funny here. You're looking at a guy who spent 8 years wrestling with Bill Gates's Mutated Love Beast he so laughingly dares call an 'operating system.1) XP support is going to drop soon. It's already way behind the technology curve. No point in hanging on it.2) Vista...well, that's a mixed bag of contradictions in itself. Couple the fact that Vista has so many annoying issues with the fact that Microshaft is already ditching it (think Windows ME-->XP debacle) in favor of Windows 7 slated for release 2008-2009, then you have a very tough set of issues ahead.I would also point out that Microslack has indicated that Windows 7 may be the last PC-based OS it develops. They're talking about moving forward into 'cloud-based' operation systems. Basically, your home unit would be a 'dummy' terminal that runs the software from an internet server. My, my,...that's a software licensing headache I don't want to even think about.I'd go Linux if you can get done what needs to be done using it. If not, do like I did and jump into Mac OSX which will bump you up to true 64-bit multi-core computing (once Snow Leopard is released). I love it, brother. You're talking to someone who knows Windows very well and has done a lot of music production on PC (when I wasn't busy chasing down driver errors, viruses, crashed discs, debugging, defragging, etc...).That's my two bits, for what it's worth...

There's an article in the recent issue of Recording Magazine right now about the bad rap Vista is getting. They're saying it's not bad at all. For the non music things I use it for, it's a strangely configured, quirky, slow, behemoth and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone except if they need to look at high resolution images. I'm one of those people among thousands who don't want to buy new software every time I turn around so yes, sooooo many people will be attempting to run old sofware on new systems if at all possible. And don't want to relearn the friggin new version of the software.