My main computer I use to get my HD24 in and out of a computer is a 750MHz PIII with a MOTU 2408mkII STILL running 98. It'll transfer 24 24/44.1KHz tracks without breaking a sweat.
Putting on my network security professional hat for a moment here. Definitely, yes. Always plan on keeping all your machines fully up-to-date on security stuff if they're going to be anywhere near a network.I would skip the W10 upgrade unless this is your only computer and must be up-to-date with all the security updates and stuff. In which case, you probably definitely want to look at adding some RAM.
W10 did not treat my equally old notebook kindly, though I was an early adopter so probably got the most bugs - that system is now running Ubuntu. Your options for DAWs and plugins will be more limited with Linux, and that is not a system I'd put a VM or even Wine on and expect decent performance (but that's me, having worked in the PC industry for 20+ years before retiring).
As others have said, unless you're doing a lot of complex FX processing, that will be fine. You'll be able to run dozens and dozens of tracks simultaneously without hiccups if they're all rendered to stem.
My concern here would be windows 10. W10 can run on those specs, but it will use most of your resources. I would recommend leaving it on win7 and taking the system offline so that it's not affected with security support ends next year.
I had the exact same experience. Win10 slowed my laptop down to the point it couldn't do what it needed for music. Switching to Ubuntu, it's been working great.
I have another computer that I think is even older than 2011, similar specs though with "only" 4 GB DDR2 etc. and it runs Windows 10 perfectly.
Interesting. I guess it will be a little hit or miss depending on exact hardware (including obscure bus sets), drivers, etc.I had a notebook that was running one of the newer versions of Windows, everything HORRIBLY slow. It wouldn't have crossed most peoples mind to even try a lot of stuff on that machine. I installed one of the more lightweight variants of Ubuntu on it, and in fact it was capable of playing back at least 720p video, at about 5000 kbps. Easily, actually with no hiccups and if I remember right 720p is above that old things display resolution. I guess you could say Windows 7/8/10 just "is not optimized" for things like that.
However, what I was about to post is: true. I'm one of the ones still recording with XP (driver availability) and I'm regularly delighted with that aspect of my studio, if you would call it that. That hardware is from roughly 2005, 2006 including the hard drive and it boots (snap fingers) like that. Almost faster than this box I'm typing on now, and it's HDD vs SSD even. The software too, I'm still using old versions of stuff since the new ones bring nothing I need but slow the machine down horribly. I don't even know how they make that happen. On purpose?