Hi nelbert,
I hear your frustration and I am trying to explain:
a) There should be no sync issues running a Manager in Win7 and Clients in XP. A lot of people do that and this has been tested a lot.
You can run Win 7 Manager with ASIO Output and XP Clients and never run into sync issues.
b) mixing Server Clients (XP) with Player Clients (Win 7) will lead to sync issues, so please do not mix Clients in a Softedge Projection or on a LED Wall.
There is nothing coolux can do about that, it has something to do with changed system architecture inside Windows.
Windows just reacts slightly differently which can lead to those sync problems.
However you can of course mix Win 7 Clients and Win XP Clients when the Outputs are not Related to each other like in a Softedge.
c) Coolux is quite aware that Windows XP can not be bought by end users anymore. It is however still available to manufactures.
Coolux is also aware that this can lead to all kind of problems when mixing clients.
Changing to OS on a current Product is not as easy as it sounds for many reasons and would lead to way more problems.
d) The first coolux Product that is available with Windows 7 is the new Compact Player and the new Compact Station that was released a couple of weeks/month ago.
http://www.coolux.de/products/pandorasboxcompactplayer/e) I can pretty much ensure you, that if a new Hardware Products comes out (like the Compact Player), they will not have XP anymore.
f) At this point in time there is also no plan of changing the very well working Hardware / OS Combination of the V4 Servers or Dual / Quadplayers to Windows 7.
It does not answer you question of how long it will take (since I do not know that answer), but I hope this answer helps you a little bit.
Daniel