[chadh]

I'm trying to work out if it is worthwhile upgrading the OS on the PC I use for serving music.  I'm currently using Windows XP, and would naturally upgrade to Windows 7.

The PC I use is a little netbook, using SSD.  I use Foobar 2000, with ASIO4ALL to get bit-perfect output.  All the music is in flac form, and is stored on a networked hardrive that I can access either wirelessly or or by ethernet cable.  Music serving is the only thing I use the netbook for, so my only concern is with audio quality.  Is there any audible improvement using Windows 7 that would justify the time and expense of upgrade?

If the Windows 7 upgrade is worthwhile, what are the system requirements?  I'd need to check whether my little Asus netbook can run it.

Thanks.

Chad

[ctviggen]

You can download an upgrade advisor:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1b544e90-7659-4bd9-9e51-2497c146af15&displaylang=en

It'll tell you what you need to do.  To upgrade from XP, it's really a new installation.  I doubt there's any music reason to upgrade, although it is a nicer operating system (I have all windows 7 computer systems at home). 

[mgalusha]

I use Win 7 on a nettop for my music source. Like you it's a dedicated system. I don't know that one is better than the other since you are bypassing Kmixer. Save the money for some more tunes.

[FullRangeMan]

I see only advantages for Microsoft(she want made all PCs slow and obsolete to the custumer buy a new CPU/software), ence W7 is seven times bigger than XP, require more RAM and processing capacity.
I like small operational systems.
Gustavo

[Jon L]

I'm trying to work out if it is worthwhile upgrading the OS on the PC I use for serving music.  I'm currently using Windows XP, and would naturally upgrade to Windows 7.

I use Foobar 2000, with ASIO4ALL to get bit-perfect output.  All the music is in flac form, and is stored on a networked hardrive that I can access either wirelessly or or by ethernet cable. 

For music, there is no reason to "upgrade" to Win7.  In fact, there are reasons to stay with XP since the best-sounding foobar (0.8.3) cannot be used with Windows beyond XP.  You also need to ditch ASIO4ALL and use native ASIO driver for foobar/your device, which sounds far superior usually. 

In addition, certain audiophiles have reported that music stored on a local drive gives you better sound quality than from same files off of networked drives.  I haven't done the comparison myself, but that should be food for thout. 

[ctviggen]

I see only advantages for Microsoft(she want made all PCs slow and obsolete to the custumer buy a new CPU/software), ence W7 is seven times bigger than XP, require more RAM and processing capacity.
I like small operational systems.
Gustavo

I like small operating systems, too, but even I have to admit that Windows 7 is better than any previous Windows (Winblows? Windoze?) operating systems.  The feature where you can see what's in other windows by going to the taskbar is worth the cost of the upgrade, in my opinion.  For instance, I'm typing this while a video (of the Drive-By Truckers) plays in the background.  If I hover the mouse over the taskbar and over that window's icon, I see the actual video, in miniature.  That's too cool. 

[flintstone]

I have full featured Linux operating systems on some of my computers...they run no faster than Windows 7,  I like Windows 7 a lot.


Dave

[skunark]

I have full featured Linux operating systems on some of my computers...they run no faster than Windows 7,  I like Windows 7 a lot.


Dave

Linux is way faster than Windows 7 for what I use it for.    Typically I don't upgrade the OSes on PCs just buy a new one that is faster and either give away the old computer or install Linux on it with freevo, mythTV or whatever is hot these days for HTPC.   Only Linux and MacOSX offers performance increases on upgrades.     Typically windows 7 will be 10% slower than XP which you can google that.