Compatibility of old(ish) Software with Windows 7

[Robert Lauriston]

I had compatibility problems in 64-bit Windows with a lot of older
software I'd rather not waste money buying again. Plus for work I
spend a lot of time testing, so the closer my system is to what
customers are using, the better. Otherwise I end up having to spend
more time dealing with VMs.

You'd think that 64-bit would be the way to go for audio production,
but the consensus I found was that it's still safer to stay with
32-bit to avoid various problems. I'm not hitting any bottlenecks so I
would not get any better performance if I had chosen 64-bit.

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 1:34 AM, Davis, David <David.Davis at invensys.com> wrote:
> Robert,
> I'd agree that if someone is buying a new computer and is only planning on doing word processing on it,
> then there's probably no point in them spending cash on getting over 2GB RAM in it (spend it on a better quality PSU, or a nice big fast SSD drive, or a couple of nice big monitor screens, or...)
>
> But if you already have a PC with 2GB RAM and have a choice of 32bit vs 64bit Windows, then I really don't see any reason to go for 32 bit on the grounds of "compatibility" -
> the only things you may have compatibility problems with are, as you say, ancient DOS programs or some obsolete hardware drivers....
> and if someone is concerned with compatibility and wants an easy life, I don't see what they'd be doing with either of those on their PC in the first place! :)
> Avoiding keeping your IT estate current on compatibility grounds is very much a false economy, as sooner or later they'll find themselves marooned with software that is no longer up to the job and with no easy upgrade path...
>
> As for memory-intensive audio software: that's a textbook example of an application where 64 bit is ideal! If you're running big audio sample libraries (e.g. there's orchestral ones out there these days that run to tens of gigabytes) then you'll want them all loaded up in RAM at once, which is only possible on a 64 bit OS. You can expect hugely better performance in that scenario kind of scenario with 64 bit. If you're not seeing it then that suggests to me that something's not configured right on your PC.....
>
>
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 10:49:35 -0800
> From: Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com>
> To: "framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
> Subject: Re: Compatibility of old(ish) Software with Windows 7
> Message-ID:
>         <CAN3Yy4AG7kCnsLeSFeV2R_HAiTOMpKztZuDUQTpjgKhqPXyDhQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I think buying more than 4GB of RAM would be a waste of money for most
> tech writers.
>
> The only thing I've done in my work where I've needed more than 4GB is
> testing server applications with large memory footprints. The rest of
> the time I'm not using even half my 4GB.
>
> Outside of work I run music software that's extremely memory-intensive
> and 4GB on 32-bit is not a bottleneck.
>
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Syed Zaeem Hosain
> (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net) <Syed.Hosain at aeris.net> wrote:
>> On a modern computer/laptop of the past few years, which are usually fully 64-bit capable and _usually_ have more than 4GB of main memory, installing Windows 7 32-bit is silly and wasteful. You end up not using the memory above 4GB (actually, less, since the graphics cards and stuff also take up some of the low-memory in a 32-bit OS load), etc., etc., etc.
>
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