I was told by technical support at Dell that 99.9% of Vista drivers work with Windows 7.
I had a similar concern with my Tascam interface - the latest drivers are for Vista. I upgraded my computer and went from XP to W7. Anyway, I downloaded the Vista drivers and it works flawlessly.
- I was also told that it's better to get W7 Professional. Something about it being more backwards compatible.

Thanks for the info. I'm gonna try to get in touch with the support at eastwest, but it's good to hear that most of it is backwords compatible. I can't imagine it not being backwords compatible and not hearing many complaints thus far.

When I got my new computer, the salesperson told me that W7 Pro actually has an XP mode on it that will run really old stuff. I'm not sure exactly how it works because I haven't had to use it yet. But it's good to know that it's on there.

I had EW Symphonic Orchestra running in Windows 7 and it worked just fine. I moved back to XP from Win 7 RC. I'm not sure I want to make the move yet. It's a good OS but I wish they would make it less demanding as far as Graphics and general resources are concerned.

Hmm. Well, I really am not sure what I need to get then. I'm pretty set on getting a new computer, but I'm hesitant to get windows 7 on it if its just going to run into compatibility problems. I really don't want to get vista because of how much memory it hogs to run, and I am hesitant to put xp on it because i fear it will soon be outdated. Any suggestions?

I don't think you're going to have a problem with compatibility on W7. I think it will pretty much run everything that is Vista approved. Like I was saying earlier, the drivers on my firewire interface ARE Vista drivers that have been out for quite sometime and it works just like it's supposed to. And I know that W7 definately takes up alot more real estate than xp, but factor that in with the speed of the new i5 and i7 processors and all the RAM that they can handle. I haven't even set up my W7 comp for audio recording yet and it already smokes my old xp system that is set up.

Windows7 Professional installed as a 64bit OS installation has the ability to run any 32bit application.
It will create a separate Program Files X86 mode folder (32bit).
Any applications that are native 32bit will be installed into that folder rather than the standard Program Folder (64bit).
So you end up with two Program File folders.
The only issue with that is it will always be executed and memory mapped in 32bit so if it's a complete standalone application then absolutely no problem.
If it is a plugin application or needs to be used or embedded within a host application, the host software must be 32bit as well. You cannot mix memory address space unless you have software bridge that can jump between the two page files.
An example would be say you install Cubase or Sonar as a 32bit application under Win7 64bit.....no problem
You install a 32bit plugin application like NI Kore etc....no problem...it will work just fine.
If you try to mix 64bit applications with 32bit applications you again need a bridge program (like Win7 already has with its 32/64 program folders). There is "Jbridge" out there that operates within a 64bit DAW application and bridges in 32bit plugin applications....some people have had good luck with it on certain plugins.
What I've seen done is to install all of your current audio software into Win7 as 32bit even if its has a 64bit version and leave everything in the 32bit realm until you can upgrade all of your software to 64bit if and when it becomes available.
Then when you have everything 64bit all you need to do is reinstall your 64bit versions.
There is really no performance loss using 32bit applications in 64bit environments unless your a huge power user....in which case you would already be upgrading to all 64bit applications that are available.
In fact a 64bit OS executing and mapping RAM page space for 32bit applications can significantly increase the performance of the 32bit application because the OS system files are executing and mapped in the 64bit environment leaving more of the 4G RAM memory map for the 32bit application.