"Marc Wielage" wrote in message
.com...
I do think it's problematic to use *any* operating system beyond 7-8
years,
because eventually, you're kind of on an isolated island where you're
unable
to upgrade and it gets harder and harder to get support. And when
mission-critical outboard peripherals fail, you eventually get forced into
upgrading both hardware and OS.

Well XP is a lot older than that and still fine for most purposes, and still
used by a lot of people. Most people simply upgrade the OS when they buy a
new computer, you won't find a new one with XP on it any more even if you
wanted it. And you probably won't find al the necessary drivers if you did
want to downgrade.
Most people don't necessarily need to race out and upgrade their existing
Windows 7 computers to Windows 8 though.

Trevor.