"Moe DeLoughan" wrote in message
...
On 3/30/2014 10:15 PM, wrote:

Or buy an off-lease computer with WinXP Pro that is only less than 5
years old with DDR3 ram and SATA hard drive instead of his ancient
ide HD and DDR2 ram.

Bingo. A lot of electronics retailers and electronics recycling companies
sell refurbished second-hand pcs dirt cheap. These are usually off-lease
business models. A guy I know recently replaced his ancient XP box with a
refurbed IBM-era Lenovo running Win 7 Pro from Microcenter. A big
improvement over what he'd had, for only $130.00.

Speaking of which, searching the inventory of retailers such as
Microcenter will still find new pcs running Win 7. In fact, a quick check
of Microcenter's website just turned up more than two dozen Win 7 desktop
models. So if you really don't want to wrestle with Win 8 (and I can't
blame you), you can still choose new and get an OS that doesn't require
completely relearning how to use the pc.

I was not familiar with Microcenter until you posted it here. There is one
about 20 miles from me. This may be the ticket.