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Re: Can you help me evaluate 2 computers for live looping purposes




 > He said that Vista has gotten much better, and that all the
 > music apps he uses (and he uses a lot) run ok under Vista. He said  
Vista
 > would be a better choice than XP because it utilizes the dual  
processor much
 > more effectively than XP can.

Sort of.  My understanding is that XP Home supports only one
"processor" (a chip that goes into a socket) but it does support more
than one "core" within a processor.  There aren't many multi-processor
machines, most are dual or quad core.  XP Pro supports both
multi-processor and multi-core.  There were some problems early on
that required BIOS upgrades for AMD processors, and I think SP2 fixed
a few problems.

It is probably true that Vista was written to make better use
of multi-cores for it's own internal operation but you won't
notice this much when you're running a single audio application.
It is more important that the audio application be written to take
advantage of multiple cores.

 > Is any of our favorite tools still incompatible with Vista?

Not that I'm aware of.  Major software companies have to support Vista
by now or they'd be out of business.  I regularly use Bidule, Audio
Mulch, and energyXT.  Most VSTs don't have any issues because they
operate within a very limited framework, it is host support for
multi-cores that is more important.

The main problem with Vista is that it is much more of a CPU hog
than XP, especially if you enable all of the fancy "Aero" user
interface features.  So you need a modern machine with a good
graphics card to run it and a CPU intensive audio application
at the same time.

Don't be afraid of Vista if you're getting a new multi-core machine
with a graphics card that has at least 128MB of dedicated memory.
But if you're trying to get the cheapest possible laptop or
a small ultra-portable, they won't be very powerful and XP is usually
a better choice.

Jeff