Beverly, the end of support date for Win 7 is 1/14/2020, so there's still some time left on the meter. What I am hoping is that in that time add-ons and hacks can be developed to negate some of the terrible privacy/Microsoft-control-of-your-computer issues that have turned up.

So what would the advantages of 10 be versus 7, in my case?

I was all ready to make the switch before the aformentioned issues became apparent. Everything I'd read to that point had praised Win 10 as being a better OS. OTOH, for most people, Win 7 is probably good enough, and actually has some options (especially some media options) that Win 10 no longer has.

I upgraded to Windows 10 on my desktop and haven't discovered anything compelling over Windows 7. If you think Cortana (the voice stuff) would be something you use, then maybe that would be compelling. OTOH, I almost never use it anymore. I switched over to Ubuntu and left the Windows partition around in case I ever need Windows for something. My laptop is Ubuntu only.

Thanks, guys. Cortana is the first thing I disabled/hid. You can't really delete it, but I would if I could.

I collect, arrange, archive pictures, and do some minor photo editing with Windows' own software plus a free download program. Photoshop itself is much more than I need for what I do. I archive and play fanvids. I don't have, nor do I want, a music collection on the computer. I do a lot of word processing and editing. Those are what I use my laptop for, those things, and surfing the net. Bells and whistles beyond that are useless for me, and I disable and hide them whenever, however I can, because they take up mental bandwidth avoiding them and working around them. Icons on my desktop I don't use are like waving alarm flags in my peripheral vision, and working through protocol ladders or chains is more tiring than it needs to be.

I've streamlined and simplified what I do on the computer with 7, and 10 just seems needlessly complicated for my needs.

I think I'll hang onto 7 for a while longer. Thanks again!

If it makes a difference, my friend's job these days is pretty much defending Windows 10 around the globe but his wife still uses 7 at home (I think the kids may use 8.1). That convinced me I had done the right thing by special ordering my most recent laptop so I could keep 7.

So...coding type people, what's the platform these days?

If I were to want to build a database based something or other. Program? Application? What languages, etc. would I need to use? What sql base?

App creation: what about that? What are the tools I would need to put in my belt?

It all just seems like different flavors of Kool-Aid to me these days.

Some of it depends on how big a database, and what you need to do with it.

My fall back pick would be Access in front and SQL in back, but that's only because it's what I used when I was still doing that sort of thing. It's also been 3+ years and I have no idea what's current. Now that I'm teaching I just keep everything, i.e., grades, in Excel worksheets.

I run most of my business off of a Filemaker Pro Server and Filemaker Pro clients.

It would be initially quite small, but could grow pretty quickly. Furthermore, it would be nice if I had file storage.

So, ok, I should probably just give y'all parameters, eh?

I want to build a two-pronged songwriter database/app. On the one side would be A&R type analysis. I'd keep track of which writers are writing which songs for which artists, and then track how those songs do in the charts. Ideally I'd build out from there, so that eventually I'd have the data that showed me everything from what range an artist sings in, to who's in his camp in a variety of positions, to what tempo/topic etc. his songs are. This prong is market research for song pitching, basically. I could eventually pull in social media and other elements to track which smaller acts are likely to rise, etc.

The second prong is song management. So then I know who I want to pitch to and what they're looking for these days. I know when their last album came out and what the average time between albums was so I know if they're likely in the studio or not.

So then I have to manage my own writing. I need to know what songs I have, again in what tempo's, etc. If they've been pitched, and to whom (so I need publishers, music supervisors, etc. in the mix) and what their status is. Who my cowriters and producers are. Then the document storage portion comes in, and I would probably do this leg last because there are other ways to deal with this out there right now. It's just that there isn't anything all together like this. So I'd eventually want to be able to store lyric sheets, legal documents like split sheets, work-for-hire statements, contracts. Plus maybe eventually the music itself. So, .mp3s probably initially, but later, I'd want to store the pro tools projects, or at least the stems, which would be heavy heavy amounts of data.

Then I would want to be able to query across the two sides to match up artists' needs with my work.

So, ambitious, but I think I could chunk it and work on little bits. I know Access & SQL but from waaay back, so I'd need to get current even there.

You probably don't want to store documents and projects in the database itself. It's probably more efficient to store them as individual files in their own area, with links or addresses to the files stored in the database.

You're gonna want to go with some flavor of SQL for the kinds of queries you're gonna need, but with the documents and mp3s and such you may want to think about a web front end, with some Access forms for the administrative stuff.

(It really has been a while. It took me a minute to come up with the word "queries" for what I was trying to express. Yeesh!)