My laptop mfg (Compaq) says my laptop will not work with Vista (it’s one year old) but I backed up all the data and upgraded anyway. It works great - except the AC97 sound driver really was awful. I reinstalled the old XP driver and joy! Performance is noticeably better than XP Pro SP2 (I am using Vista Business edition.)

Like the article said, Vista is close and will be ready soon, but not yet. I would, however recommend installing it on a 2nd partition or drive if you want to start learning all about Vista now and put yourself ahead of the curve.

I have two apps that work great in Vista; Sonar 6.2 and FL Studio 7. I haven’t had any problems with VST’s at all, from Albino to Discovery to Melodyne (and about 80 others I have tested.)

If you’re on a tight budget for software on Windows, there are fantastic free and cheap alternatives to cracked software. Some of these rival or best their more expensive alternatives in many respects. And try taking the leap to make this new machine cracked-free: you may find you have a much more hassle-free, stable system. I’ll admit, not all cracked software causes system problems, but some can cause some very serious ones. And you’re missing out on a lot of the most unique software for PC.

From CDM:
Straight Out of No Cash series for cheap and (largely) free software

Highlife, free sampler / slicer / gadget

Reaper, superb host for $40 from the creator of Winamp

I still say go XP over Vista for now for this stuff, for compatibility reasons.

Vista probably doesn’t really change anything with respect to software cracks except maybe cracks of Vista. General compatibility of the program with Vista is probably the biggest issue. Because Vista throws another factor into the equation it may be difficult to debug problems if you don’t know if Vista is causing a crash or if it’s the software. But I have to ask is it really necessary to run cracks in this day and age? There’s so much good software that’s free or really affordable I have to question the need. If you are student there’s tons of great student discounts.

I’ve just ordered a new computer currently being built to spec….as Vista has just come out I had the 64-bit home version installed as I retardly didn’t think there would be any problems with backwards compatibility for using XP music software on Vista. So:

(i) would it be recommended that I just ask the people building my computer to load XP instead? (I primarily use Cubase SX 2, Adobe Audition, Wavelab and numerous VST instruments)

(ii) in addition to the software listed above, a friend of mine (*cough *cough) uses a lot of freeware and ‘cracked’ software for more minor apps as he’s not yet making any money from ‘his’ music, and simply can’t yet afford to spend thousands of £ on the software ‘he’ needs. How will the security & DRM parameters of Vista affect cracked software usage? Will ‘he’ still be able to use it, or will Vista simply turn its nose up, laugh at you & crash?

While I’ve had good result with my ACER laptop, I’m not planning to upgrade my Dell Precision 370 desktop anytime soon. That system runs several programs that have dongles and advanced copy protection (C-Dilla, Rainbow etc). Also several programs require specific OpenGL support, and I don’t know how good the Vista driver for the video board (NVidia Quadro FX1400) is. And I also have an M-Audio Project Mix audio interface that isn’t yet (or maybe ever) supported by Vista. So that system is a long ways off from Vista or maybe never.

This isn’t a critique of Vista, as I said. And “later” may well be next week. I’m simply saying:

1. Most music users are unlikely to be able upgrade at this point. Since the beginning, I’ve said that only a few will be able to upgrade. If you exclusively use SONAR and Reason, for instance, and you can verify compatibility of your audio and MIDI gear, you’re part of the select few I’d recommend. You just need a critical mass to upgrade even as an early adopter / on a second partition as a secondary OS. I do expect this will change over the coming weeks, and we’ll have updates here on CDM every week or two.

2. The more significant problem has nothing to do with music, and little to do with Vista, and that’s that some hardware vendors (NVIDIA and Alienware in my case, but I don’t think they’re alone) aren’t giving upfront details. That means the decision to upgrade can’t be impulsive; you need to double-check that all the drivers are actually there, and you can’t assume otherwise they’ll work. That’s always the case, but there’s an unusually large gap between the PR and the technical side. And people should be aware that changes to the way graphics works, etc., means that some incompatibilities will be far more than aesthetic.

#1 I expected; musicians almost never upgrade OSes on day one, and given the complexity of our software and hardware setups relative to other users, that’s fine. #2 I find a little frustrating. It is good to know ATI is onboard (which also says good things about the MacBook Pro, incidentally).

For the record, my Alienware is running pretty well, and I do have the Visual Studio hotfix beta running, so while that “Microsoft’s own development tools” comment still holds, they do have the beta available and they are communicating what to do.

No, mostly I’m frustrated because some of the major vendors could have made their process easier. And, yeah, ATI is winning out on driver availability this round.

What seems different this time though is indeed lack of basic stuff like video drivers from the bigger players.