I've had Win7 for several years, on a separate drive in my main computer. I also put Vegas 13 on that drive.

I rarely ever boot to that drive, and have only used Vegas 13 a few times. Why? Because of all the arbitrary and pointless differences, mostly in the user interface, but also in underlying functionality.

Almost all the issues are learning curve issues (I'm speaking of both Win7-64 and Vegas 13). After many years of going back and forth (I also have Windows 7 on a laptop), I've learned most of the new stuff and I have to say, there is not one single thing I miss when I go back to WinXP or to earlier versions of Vegas.

Not one.

Yesterday, I tried to edit some 60p wedding video from my Sony CX700V that I shot as a guest at a wedding this past weekend. The playback was a little slow in Vegas 10 on WinXP Pro 32-bit, so I re-booted and tried editing it on Windows 7 64bit using Vegas 13. Twenty minutes later, I had not even made my first cut because of all the issues trying to get Vegas 13 to feel even remotely like my Vegas 7, 8, & 10 versions that I still use every day under Windows XP. One example is the idiotic idea of only allowing you to put certain icons on the original toolbar at the top of the screen where they have always resided ever since Vegas had a configurable toolbar. Instead, these can now only go on the new transport control toolbar which, with my workflow, I never use and is positioned off screen. This is relatively minor, but it is a great illustration of an arbitrary and pointless design decision that doesn't improve anything and actually, for me, makes life worse.

I can go on, but there have been enough threads about all the pros and cons of various UI changes that happened starting around Vegas 10 or 11.

I also was disappointed in the playback experience. It appears that playback of 60p video from my Sony CX-700V, on my computer, is not any better in Vegas 13 under Windows 7 64-bit than it is on the same computer in Vegas 10 using Window XP Pro 32-bit. Perhaps a better video card would help (see my current computer configuration in the sacred "system specs" section of my user profile).

So, bottom line, while it is not a huge deal, and I don't think you will find any major technical issues, you are going to find a lot of subtle -- and not so subtle -- arbitrary and pointless changes that may take a surprisingly large cut out of your workflow efficiency.

Efficiency is really important to me because I have created almost 100 scripts and tools that allow me to work at an exceedingly fast pace. For instance, each year I film a Nutcracker with two cameras, plus a sound recording device connected to the sound board. I can edit that two camera shoot the evening of the matinee, and deliver the final DVDs the following day. I can do this because of all the tools and techniques I've created during my dozen years using Vegas.

When using Vegas 13 with Windows 7, I feel like I've been taken back to the beginning because many of those tools and techniques no longer work. Fortunately, I can edit pretty much anything in Vegas 8, and then when I want to render using the much improved rendering engine in Vegas 13 (under Windows 7 - 64 bit), I simply reboot, open the project, and render there.

Oh yes, one caveat about that: all your 32-bit stuff will not work. For instance, I own the 32-bit Mercalli plugin, which is infinitely superior to the de-featured version that Sony OEMs. Unfortunately, all stabilization is lost when you try to open that project in the 64-bit environment. The solution, if you want to render under the new environment, is to pre-render all the stabilized segments (I use Cineform). Of course this adds time to the workflow ...

"...arbitrary and pointless changes that may take a surprisingly large cut out of your workflow efficiency."

I share John's user interface fatigue with every application that I use on desktops and servers.

I have just converted from XP Pro to Win 7 Pro 32 bit reluctantly. My 2002 Epson printer would not work so I junked it. Internet Explorer 11 must have had some issues during downloading 277 Windows updates as it was malfunctioning profusely so I downloaded Google Chrome and it worked perfectly. Then I find out the "Outlook Express Fiasco", and yes it does not work in Windows 7. So then I have to purchase Outlook (the full version) to get the "E" mail to work or use the Google one. But I wanted the same thing I have in the other XP computer.
If you try to download Internet Explorer 11 the website tells you that your computer already has a later version and shuts you off. Have you ever tried to uninstall Internet Explorer? I think I will leave it alone and go with Google. Surprisingly the network is functioning flawlessly. Windows 7 did suck up the old Matrox video card driver and that was designed for Vista. Every time I upgrade it turns into a mesmionic fog of uncertainty.
JJK

Every time I upgrade it turns into a mesmionic fog of uncertainty.Amen to that. Well said.

If you like the old VP10 so much you can still install and run it under Win7 64bit, even the 32bit version and all your 32bit plugins should work too.

So I'm in the early days of upgrading and I'm wondering why MS feel the need to throw their OS's up in the air every few years when the tangible benefit to me is very little. Except of course it's life saving for MS. No wonder a large part of the world have stayed with XP. I've already had some fun and games with the Permissions in W7. For two large files, before I could copy them, I had to take ownership (what a process that is), and that in spite of being the user/administrator.

The funny thing is a little over a year ago I bought Vegas Pro v12 having already missed an upgrade from 10 to 11. And because I couldn't face the pain of upgrading from XP to W7 I've not used it. More fool me.

Clearly I need to keep one partition on my laptop dedicated to XP and VPv10, and ensure it's not connected to the Net. Fortunately I should benefit from my W7 & VPv13 when I build my new desktop, then my laptop will just be for going out and about.

Cheers, Maurice

If you like the old VP10 so much you can still install and run it under Win7 64bit, even the 32bit version and all your 32bit plugins should work too. That's good advice. I actually do have exactly that installed on my Win 7 64bit drive.

The only issue is that if I want to render using Vegas 13, which does have better rendering abilities for most codecs, I still have to pre-render anything that uses the 32-bit plugins.

However, now that you mention this, I might be able to write a script that would take a list of 32-bit plugins (I'd supply the list), look for any events or media to which these had been applied, render those segments, and then replace those with the pre-rendered video. I actually have all the code written from that Deshaker script I wrote years ago.

Thanks for the idea!

So I'm in the early days of upgrading and I'm wondering why MS feel the need to throw their OS's up in the air every few years when the tangible benefit to me is very little.And of course the ultimate example is what they did to the Office suite five years ago. I stayed away from that upgrade, but someone gave me four laptops a few months ago, all of which had these versions of Office installed. I was on the road with one of these, with no choice but to try to write letters and do spreadsheet work with the new versions, so I had to learn the UI. All sorts of people told me I'd like it once I learned it, but for me, I was never able to achieve anything approaching the efficiency I enjoyed with the older interface.

It is a difference without a purpose.

Fortunately, there are three different products that let you approximate the old Office interface, while retaining access to the newer interface, is you want it. I wish such a thing existed for Vegas 13, especially because 13 does have some pretty important features compared to the ancient version I keep finding myself clinging to.

BTW, Windows 7 has an "XP interface" that you can invoke, and it does actually provide enough of the old interface and features that I was able to get my work done pretty easily.

So for the OP, that is something to keep in mind.

Updating my Win7 conversion, I have found if your older hardware has Vista drivers they may work just fine as did my old Matrox Parhelia video card. My old Epson 2002 printer was a wash and had to go. I tried to force Outlook Express setup.exe and no go. Went through the compatibily of Win7 and it said that this application will not work in Win7 after loading all the supposed right stuff to make it work. The Realtek audio 4.1 was cut to 2.0. To my surprise the Adaptec SCSI
stuff worked OK. And also the old Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra motherboard functioned just fine. I was astounded that the networking worked better than it ever has. Vegas 10E starting menu did a lot of blinking on start-up but was ok. DVD A 5.2 did the same thing but was ok. This is not my movie computer but I am pretty satisfied not getting those insidiuos "XP warnings".
JJK