I'd never run the home edition of any MS OS for pro use. There's always been tweaks and drivers available for the pro edition that the home editions don't get.

The home version can only run 1 physical processor - single, duo or quad cpu - but not i.e. run a double Xeon processor machine like the Mac Pro.

If you buy Pro, it comes in both 32 & 64-bit versions. I have elected to run the 32-bit because of the issues so many 64-bit Vegas users are having. Plus, there is still too much of a scarcity of apps and drivers for 64-bit.

The migration to 64-bit is slower than I would have imagined it would be.

I run Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on my QuadCore and everything works fine. All of my 32-bit apps are working perfectly. There is no reason that I can see to use the 32-bit version at all (unless maybe for some laptops or low memory systems), and no reason to pay double for the Pro version unless you have 8 cores and need dual Xeon support as was pointed out previously.

~jr

I use myself a W7 64bits with Vegas 9 32 bit without problems (V9 64 bit is buggy).

I'm not shure if there is any serious downside/incompatibility in running V9 32 bit in a 64 bit OS.
No one for me to this date.

G'day Jay. It MAY be a little safer to go to 64 bit, at least from my experience there have been no apps that were problematic.

I have Vegas Pro 9C, the entire Adobe suite, which include the 64 bit version of Photoshop (REALLY FAST), and yes, it includes Premiere Pro (which I have only tried out, don't like it, at all), Digital Juice, PowerPoint, Word, and Particle Illusion.

I have limited internet connectivity on this machine, I only use it to update software and drivers.

I have not yet needed to run the 32 bit version of Vegas, 64 is running solidly.

All that said, I'm sure there are a lot of apps that have problems with Win 7 64, but for Vegas editing, it is running great for me, love it. And for Photoshop, the 64 bit version is AMAZING, it even uses hardware acceleration.

I use win7 64bit Pro. The pro version includes Windows Media Center, which I use to catch over-the-air HDTV broadcasts from my local PBS station via a cheap USB tuner; the tuner's included software always has been buggy in XP32 bit, and impossible on my 64-bit Win7.

Also, I've read on the Blink-3-times thread regarding modifying some of the Vegas files in order to avoid rendering crashes that the fix only works on Pro-&- above versions of Windows.

I must admit that a number of my really old apps don't work in 64-bit: WinZip, Adobe Acrobat, U-Lead Cool 3d, etc.; and some slightly newer apps, such as the noise reduction plugin for Sound Forge (I haven't verified the problem on my own Sound Forge - it's just what I read elsewhere on this forum), etc. I don't know if they are incompatible because of 64-bit OS or because of Win7 incompatibilities.

However, I'd still go with 64-bit if I were to do it again, because it does render some of my long, complex .VEGs. They never even came close to rendering without multiple crashes on my 32-bit OS (on the same hardware). So far, I have not needed the Blink-3-times fix. Now I always edit in 8c-32 bit, then render in 9c-64 bit. So far so good.

With the pro 7, you get XP Mode wihch runs very nicely for anything that won't work on Win7. I have one app with a browser interface that won't run on 7, but haven't found anything else that won't work on the 64 bit 7.

Unfortunately, I've had some programs that neither Win7 nor XP Mode could handle. In XP Mode, they couldn't find the graphics accelerator chips, it seems, and refused to open - with a message regarding not finding a VGA card or something. That's why I re-installed WinXP for dual boot. Also, XP Mode is slow to open and slow to close.

However, I would think that most people still would have their XP installation disks; so I really don't see why anyone would avoid Win7-64bit - provided their hardware supports 64 bit OS. Most programs run just fine in 64-bits, and the occasional reboot to Win XP 32 hasn't been a problem for me (although that's one of the main reasons that I bought 2 SSDs - boot time speeds up something like 5-fold compared to spinning disks).

I've had some programs that neither Win7 nor XP Mode could handle

Then download the last resort, which is Virtual XP from MIcrosoft. I don't have the link handy, but you can find it.
I've had to use that for a scanner I have connected to my Win7 machine. It takes an annoyingly long time to load, but it works.

Aren't they the same thing?