Should I get Win 7 Pro or Ultimate?

[miek07]

I am building a new DAW from scratch using new SSD drives. Besides the obvious price difference, what advantages does Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit have over Windows 7 Professional 64-bit as it pertains to Pro Tools performance? Edit: I do not like Win 8 64-bit, but if Win 8 has considerable Advantage to Win 7 I will consider it

[albee1952]

My 2 cents only, but I say, "save the money". And regarding those SSD'd, don't use them as recording drives(system and samples only).

[Michael_Knight]

Miek, I forgot off the top of my head but Ultimate has only a few features over professional (I think it has something to do with Active Directory) If your machine is a standalone it doesn't matter. If you need to network it to a few other PC's I would recommend professional. Microsoft should ahve a matrix that lists the differences. You may want to check their sites. I would also recommend going with Win 8 however. No need to spend more money to upgrade later. Pro tools will eventually release an update if they haven't already

[smoothbassman]

Pro works fine. Has everything you need to have a super stable system.

Only use SSD for samples, VI's, and system drives. Not recording drives. 7200RPM drives work great for recording at a lot lower expense.

[panamajack]

I have three Win7 Professional 64bit professional machines, one Intel Xeon, two AMD Opteron. I bought the Win8 upgrade but have not yet installed it. Never had any issues with Win7.

My understanding is Ultimate has features related to multi-lingual users. So, if you cyber-travel back and forth between Asia, the Middle East and USA, maybe it's worth the extra investment. My systems all use English.

The Professional version was a minimum for me because my network runs beneath a "server" environment, with its concomitant "domain" structure. Basic windows has a funky "home networking" ability that was too elementary for me, but probably okay if you only have one machine. I have three Macs, and about a dozen PCs, that need to talk to each other.