I'm hoping to get your opinions on whether I should upgrade or downgrade my OS. I currently have Windows Vista as my OS. I am having problems with Sibelius, my MIDI card, my scanner, and a lot of other things. From what I have read, these are all problems common to Vista. My question is this: Is it better to upgrade to Windows 7 or downgrade to XP? I can still find legitimate OEM versions of XP online, but is that a better option than Win. 7? My desktop could handle Win. 7 just fine and I'm planning on using it for strictly music stuff anyway. Soooo.... what do you think? Windows 7 or XP?? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Why go backwards, when you can go forwards. The onlty problem might be if you have some really old programs that may not work with Windows 7.

Agreed. Also, if you get Windows 7 Professional, there is a ";Windows XP Mode"; offered. This virtualizes a Windows XP operating system within the Window 7 OS and can be useful for running some incompatible programs. I use it at work to run some old DOS and Windows XP software and it works well.

The only thing I have found that doesn't work with Windows 7 (and not using compatibility options) is gigastudio, which is dead anyways.  If you are using 4GB of RAM or more, you should install the 64-bit version.  My M-Audio stuff, Behringer USB mixer/interface, printer, scanner, were all detected without the need to go driver hunting.  Only my video card and drawing tablet required me to install drivers, which were easy to find.