I still run win7 ultimate on a PC and a laptop that are offline 100% for my music needs another Win 7 Ultimate PC for verifying & testing if newer apps, plugins etc will still work on 7, and then for general surfing, downloading and net use I use a stripped down version of win 10 Pro on a 4th PC. I am satisfied with my setup.

 

Last edited: Apr 1, 2023

What's a "Qoute" – some kind of animal? Or just auto-correct done Windows 7 style?

 

Since you asked....... WIN10 (and 11) are systems designed from the ground up to REMOVE control from the user and hand it to the OEM. Running a Win10 system out of the box without first hacking the garbage out of it, optimizing and taking control of the OS back from the OEM is simply just dumb. Win7 has issues as well out of the box, BUT it can be secured and optimized with much LESS effort than any MS OS above it. WIN7 is also natively a smaller foot print than any of the OS's after it. Needless to say I use WIN7 for all my internet facing machines and WIN10 for singular OFFLINE uses only. WIN10 can be secured and optimized for use as a DAW. With more hacking, spyware removal and fire-walling it can also be secured for internet use as well. My newest media processing machine is WIN10 based and I did spend about a week cleansing and optimizing it for running a DAW and high end video applications. The process for doing this to win10 is MUCH more arduous than for WIN7 which is why a lot of folks prefer WIN7. I still have a DAW that is running WIN7 for legacy support. However NONE of my media machines are internet connected. They are connected network wise but only to my backend LAN. I NEVER have allowed even my WIN7 machines to run willy-nilly with MS UPDATE. I learned early on that is recipe for disaster. Patches to my machines are applied piecemeal WHEN NEEDED and only then. A good 95-99.9% of the bits that are stuffed into a machine active on the internet with a MS OS running amok with windows update is simply garbage that can potentially bring down a machine or render things on that machine useless at the drop of hat. Not an attractive "feature" for those running machines that need to be at 100% peak performance at all times like a DAW and/or NLE video editor.

There are advantages to BOTH systems (7 & 10) which is why I keep both around but there are things about win7 that just cannot be done or are made very difficult vs Win10. DirectX in win7 for example will NOT support the newest Nvidia graphics cards. As well, the newer advances in NVME storage hardware are systematically locked out for win7. There are some kludgey ways that can be employed to get around some limitations, but those are dodgy at best and do not offer full support of the hardware.

Audio quality is neither compromised or enhanced by either OS. BOTH are very capable of supporting a world class DAW or video NLE. It all depends on the kind of audio/video hardware you outfit system with. So if anyone ever tells you WIN7 is "better" for audio (or video for that matter) than Win10 they are obviously mis-informed or quite possibly using substandard hardware for the job.

 

Last edited: Apr 1, 2023

Why many people are obsessed with Windows 7?
One Word...........STABILITY !

 

Win 11 is the sauce..

 

stability in what? numbering?

I run win 10 because the moment arrived that I had to do a fresh install.
I probably stay on 10 for another 3 years, and only left win7 a year ago and xp arround 2 years ago.

I do think 10 is more stable/lighter on resources and more compatible with recent software,
I do understand peepz that just don't want to start fresh

 

proof-able false, even with Microsoft spyware win 10 is lighter on memory then 7

 

Both sound the same if you remove all additional crap from Win 10.
Win 10 has better support, it's faster and has more functionality, and you don't need Win 11 for any reason at all.
So it's definitely Win 10.

 

Browsing the web in 2023 with an end of life OS is reeeeeeaaaaally smart…

 

for a straight OOB install the figures are about the same
Win7 requires:
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
(source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10737/windows-7-system-requirements)

Win10 requires:
New device: 2 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 64-bit
Update: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
(source: Windows 10 Specifications & System Requirements)

Your mileage is going to vary considering the base configuration being used and what you have loading etc. The two systems CORE memory usages are about the same when everything is loaded and idling. But then again that's not solely what were talking about here...

 

That's about as ignorant a statement as I have heard yet.

 

You are not very smart..

 

Don't you just love it when sarcasm goes over people's heads?

 

So that the computer is engaged in my tasks, and does not serve numerous agents.
The same thing on the Mac.

 

It's fine as long as you stay offline or at least stay away from websites or online services you don't know at all. Update your program, upload something.... you'll be fine.

But new hardware does make your music "go" faster. It depends on what you're doing but sometimes more grunt is nice and you're simply not going to get the most out of new hardware with the old OS. That's when I upgrade.

I have a Win7 machine I use as a media centre in one of the rooms that only accesses the local network directly. The main reason for that is that the wifi dongle it uses is great but Netgear (bless them) proved incapable of making new drivers for it that worked with Win10. Netgear made themselves very popular with that one (as the product had been on the shelves less than a year before Win10 was out). The other reason is I can't be bothered.

Also cheese. Cheese is the best reason to keep Win7.

 

You don't have MS security updates anymore. Major virus scanners do not support W7 anymore. It's waiting for something to happen like the RPC virus that rendered XP systems unusable whenever they went online!

Most programs today need Internet access to function or to activate. So, no...you're not fine with Windows 7! You'll only be fine with it if you keep it offline indefinitely!

 

You don't magically get infected by some exploit the instant you go online. If you're careful and stick to long-known, long trusted sources you'll likely be fine. You don't want to be wandering off that path for your brief stint outside though.

On the other hand most browsers won't support Win7 anyway so you're going to have a hard time anyway.
Setting up phishing sites, honeypots and writing complicated code in order to access an as-yet unknown exploit (how many people are actually looking) for a tiny userbase is less likely than encountering something targeted for the dominant market shares which, with the right social engineering, you can infect with or without defender, security updates etc. These are the vast majority of "home user" attacks. Blaster "the RPC Virus" that you mentioned was able to infect so many by targeting what was, by far, the largest OS in use on the planet by spamming itself at anyone and everyone and that OS, at the time, WAS receiving security updates. Bad example.

Even if such an exploit was to be found in Win7, 20 years later, the sheer number of IPs, the obfuscated nature of the web and the tiny proportion of Win7 users would make this type of attack useless. If you're online for the shortest time possible then your chances would be closer to 0 than anything of being infected by such an attack.

It's not bulletproof but if you're very careful you're safe enough. Just don't do anything beyond the minimum required (which should probably be nothing most of the time) and then go back to offline. I'm not sure what you'd need to go online for since most people using Win7 in the context of this forum are happy with their setup and aren't banging new stuff in unless there's a killer update for a plug, but if you did.. make it quick.

And don't forget the cheese. Guaranteed to ward off at least 100 attacks.

 

Oh, the principal part is kinda makes sense.

 

You lack the intellectual capacity to understand sarcasm!

 

It's useful if the Win 7 machine is offline and apps are freezed on it. For all others usages, it's like arguing about the magic of audiophiles cables ;)