Which OS For Dedicated Editing Computer?

Doctor Varney

Cave dwelling Luddite
For audio books, I use the Fostex MR-8 MKII digital multi-track for capture. I'm now at a stage where I could do with getting my DAW up and running for editing. For this, I will be using FL Studio 10 Signature Bundle.

Question is, which OS should I use? I have at my disposal Windows XP Professional and Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. The machine to be used is an older AMD single core system with 2GB RAM.

I purchased a licence over the internet and burned my own disc for Windows 7. Will that disc give me the choice to install the 32 bit version for my older AMD machine?

I have Windows 7 installed on my AMD Phenom quad core system for office work, graphics and internet and I like the smoothness of it compared with Windows XP. The DAW computer is not intended for internet use and will not be connected to the internet. Before this I had Windows XP running on it but I much prefer using Windows 7. Will Windows 7 run very slowly on the single core system or won't this be noticable with just the one application running, which is FL Studio (plus my audio drivers and a few helper applications)?

If I end up installing Windows 7, what updates will I really need? I don't want to go downloading security updates that I don't need. The leaner the system the better. Can I just install Windows 7 and not bother with the updates? Will it still work properly? If I do, how will I know which ones to download, as downloading of updates on my internet computer is pretty much automatic.

Thanks.
 
I'd be inclined to stick with XP given the age of your hardware.
You may find that your win7 key is no good anyway, because you've already used it.

Not sure if win7 works the same way, but XP used to make you activate online. Once the key was used you couldn't use it again.
If you didn't activate it'd lock you out after 30 days.

If it's not going to be online I wouldn't bother with the security updates.
 
Thanks, Steen. I never activated online with XP, always by phone and the same for Windows 7 so that won't be a problem. You have to be able to use it more than once or you would not be able to do a re-install if your hard drive crashed, LOL. :)

Would 7 it need any updates at all? I have all my drivers on disc.

So you reckon it would run better with XP then? Is 7 not good with backwards compatible stuff?

Cheers.
 
Minimum requirements for XP are
Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)

Windows 7 wants
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)


Perhaps either OS will run ok on your machine, but personally I'd take XP because it leaves you more room.
 
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