Do I need ASIO for Windows 7 ?

Schwinnindia... XP to Win7 is a jump of a lot of years of technology. Depending on its age and the availability of drivers your present computer may or may not be compatible with Win7. Run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor as a place to start.

For example, I have a dell inspiron 8600 notebook that just won't make the jump... too old.

Schwinnindia...I'm years removed from running XP anything so I can't help with how an XP system sounds. However, I would feel very RAM limited with XP. The better players load into memory for a better delivery. With Win7 you can easily do an 8GB RAM system and with J River Media Center it's a very solid playback system for 24/96 and 24/192 files.