For me, Windows 2000 offers superior stability WITHOUT having to have a dedicated installation. I use the same Win2k configuration for recording, office work, video, and audio. I also believe it to be somewhat more efficient; n-track is definately more responsive.
However, you have to know what you're getting yourself into. NT development is a secondary thought at most audio companies it seems, and you'll have a hard time finding good drivers for a lot of hardware. You'll also run into some software headaches here and there. And I guess I shouldn't just target audio hardware/software, because you *could* run into problems with all sorts of hardware/software. Some games don't like Win2k, a lot of junky USB hardware like scanners don't like Win2k, etc etc.
However, if you know what you're getting into BEFOREHAND, it's a great OS. I rarely have compatibility issues anymore. Hell, I usually don't even look at the requirements for most games anymore, since most will work fine on 2k (lot's of games didn't work when win2k was first released).
For audio, I'm running a Delta44 4in/4out 24/96 soundcard with older WDM drivers from M-audio. My machine is based on a Celeron 500Mhz and I'm using a dedicated Maxtor 7200RPM hard drive. In all cases, my processor chokes well before I have any disk issues. I record exclusively at 24bit/48khz, and my average project is about 18-26 tracks with various plugins (some plugins are extremely processor hungry, and some are not, so I can't give you a number). On top of that I'm running dual monitors, ethernet, CDRW, an Ensoniq AudioPCI card for MIDI, and various USB devices. Everything works very well together on Windows 2000....no real special optimizations, and no custom installation. In fact, I'm still on the original release.
Slackmaster 2000
