Hey All,
Cantabile currently uses Microsoft .NET6 which, as of November '24, is no longer supported. Also, .NET6 is the last version that is supported on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1
So… I need to think about moving to a newer version of .NET (probably 9), but this will mean Cantabile will no longer work on anything before Windows 10.
Who’s going to be upset about this?
Brad
I just did a clean upgrade to of my last Win7 box I was using as a NAS server to Windows 10. That was long overdue - the machine runs way better after upgrade.
To those of you running Windows 7, if the processor is an i3/i5/i7 of any vintage find yourself a $10 Win10 upgrade (the single machine keys) and do a clean install. You won’t regret it.
Or go on Dell Refurbished when they are having a 40-50% off sale (almost always) and pick up a gen 12 i5 laptop - the last one I bought was under $300.
I am still plodding along on windows 7.
I’ll be happy to renew (which I still haven’t done) the license for the last version
to run on Win7. I wont be upgrading that PC to any thing else.
I’m happy with it as it is. once cantabile support is ended I can uninstall
all the internet junk on it. Which will only help it run better.
I’ll keep partition backups. and spare motherboards.
If I upgrade to windows 10 or above I’ll build a new system for it.
I haven’t used W7 as my main OS in eight years.
I held on to my last Win 7 machine as long as I could, until it gave up the ghost. My Win 8.1 is on life support, and my Win 10 machines are bracing for a lingering period of hospice before eventual death. Thus is the circle of life in the world of Windows.
Gotta do what you gotta do.
Good advice on the $10 keys, I have used those for years (including upgrading HOME to PRO, but WIN10 itself will soon be out of support in October this year, so I would skip to 11. I have made the jump to WIN11 on my DAW PC and all looks good so far, other than my Hydrasynth has difficulty connecting over USB MIDI, but I am not sure if that is coincidental or not, as it is strange in that it receives MIDI quite happilly but needs a disconnect and reconnect for the PC to receive MIDI from the Hydrasynth. I did find that WIN11 enabled power saving on all USB hubs when I upgraded, so that was annoying having to go round and disabling it all again!
My GIGPC is “not compatible” with WIN11 because it does not have a TPM module, but even Microsoft are now fessing up to ways around that, so I will at some point image my GIGPC and go for the upgrade.
Not me 
I would say there comes a time when, whilst preserving compatibility for as long as possible is good, your hand as a developer is forced when support packages are deprecated. I have the same challenge with my Java Librarians, and recently dropped support for my legacy licensing scheme (after ten years, and now users have to migrate at a small cost to the new scheme) and with Java 17 now my minimum Java standard then that is now ruling out older platforms not supported by it. But at some point you have to move on or you are putting users at risk due to outdated packages no longer supported with potential unpatched security holes.
Also, just because .NET latest is not supported, it does not mean it will not run unless it is making use of OS features not in legacy systems or an API has changed.
My Nord G2 Engine has not had a driver update or Editor update since the days of XP, and 20 years on it is still working without even having to consider a dedicated legacy Windows VM for it yet. So Windows backwards compatibility is pretty good even if not official.
Maybe somebody running Win 7 and who wants to stay on it could try an experimental build with a later version of .NET. Also, is there a way of such a user replacing your .NET version with an earlier one, assuming you are not going to move away from features and APIs already in use? Just a thought.
In 2017, I had installed Win 7 on an HP laptop (Zbook 15 G2) and it was a disaster, very high DPCs and latency impossible to handle. Real time audio unusable PC.
Apparently these problems were due to the ACPI driver and the graphics card driver (nvidia Quadro something).
I tried other drivers, even older ones, with no better results. I was about to give up and put the PC in the drawer.
As a last ditch effort, I upgraded to Windows 10 and all the problems “magically” disappeared. I used this PC until 2020 without ever having any BSODs, random reboots or freezes. One of my most rock solid PCs.
I still use it for testing, with an old M-Audio interface whose last driver was released in 2009 and is for Win 7 x64.
So I’m wondering if Win 10 has better management and drivers than Win 7, since I don’t have many other explanations for these events.
The result is that I’m keeping some Win 7 working on VM just to test old code written in 2006-2016 years, and Win 7 x86. TBH I doubt this will happen.
For audio and gigpc, I don’t think there’s any reason to install Win 7 or Win 8.x anymore. I still prefer Win 10 and choose it on my 2024 gigpc. I’m not concerned about security, the pc only goes online for progs update and authorization. Also, there’s a hardware managed firewall on my network.
Thanks everyone for the feedback.
I still have one machine where I am using Windows 7.