Forgetting my ill timed bit of foolishness earlier, I have an XP machine I use for B&B emails. It is slow as hell and you can't get around some of the obvious bugs, but it works just fine for what we use it for. If we were we were in a more hectic (or high tech) line of work it would be useless, but for reservation request it's great.

I upgraded to Windows 7 almost entirely because I wanted to use more than 4 gigs of RAM. If not for that limitation in the main 32-bit flavor of XP I would be using it for years to come. Even modern games run flawlessly on XP. I had the Witcher 2 looking like a boss on my XP rig.

Other than the 32-bit memory limitations and Direct X upgrade being necessary for 0.01% of games, there's really no reason that XP can't be used for years. Security concerns are a joke if you have any idea what you're doing.
If XP is running slow, it's not because of XP, it's either your aging hardware or too much bloatware on your system.

XP runs smooth as silk on modern hardware.

Oh it's the hardware. :D The computer was made when XP was the optimal program. By 'XP machine' I meant that in every sense of the term.

My machine I'm typing from is a XP/Win7 dual-boot. I use XP 99% of the time. Main reason? I'm not in any way prevented from doing anything I can think of that I need to on it. And I develop games independently so my needs are fairly intense.

The single game I have that needs Win7 is Duke Nukem Forever. That's quite literally it. I can run Visual Studio 2010 and 3DSMAX2010 fine in XP with no compromises. The only drawback to not being able to use VS2012 in XP is the inability to target Win8, and as you might imagine, I couldn't give a flying fuck.

I know them very well.
Actually the only two things of XP I really hated were the standard design---and the hardware at it´s time!
Pentium IV& FX 5800 everywhere was just crap ;)

Edit: Your winter-Avatar is a nice one ;)

Gydion made it for me.

Well, that´s a nice Advent-gift ;)

Operating systems periodically need updates to meet the needs of new hardware and software. Microsoft chose a business model where they sell software out right and hold a monopoly on updates. The market was saturated with XP and now they need to move on. We are compelled to follow, if slowly. This is all part of the bargain of choosing to use a proprietary operating system. The rich ecosystem of apps makes it worthwhile. These same apps keep us on the treadmill.

Also, it's shiny! :D

Yes but like GOG we don't retain any credit information. :D

Hardware doesn't age. It continues to function at the same speed as it did when bought. So if it's running slower than before it's because there's more demand made of it. XP itself did get more resource hungry with service packs, so you can definitely say that XP is running slow.

Anyway, anyone happy with XP can keep it. Personally when I go back to XP it feels ugly and less usable, but that's my personal feeling (I'd prefer using Vista to XP). Still, arguing about it is silly.

I'm an idiot here so bare with me (okay I'm an idiot everywhere but that's OT) but I've noticed the problem with keeping XP is compatibility. Specifically modern virus protection and web design. The web doesn't really matter because it still works it just doesn't look very flashy. Virus are the other hand seems to be a real problem because a lot of updated newer AV programs simply won't install with XP.

When I got this computer (used), I spent a week troubleshooting trying to get the sound to work with XP. I decided to try going to Windows 7 instead and sound worked on start-up.

You just threw any and all credibility you could have had right out the window. Anyone from a 12 year old kid to an IT technician can tell you that hardware ages and breaks down over time. Every part of your computer can slowly break down making things act quirky, throw errors, or even cause random restarts. RAM is a typical culprit of age breakdown causing slow behavior and random errors. Hard drives can get slow and malfunction and have their seek times slowed. Power supplies can throw the entire system out of whack as they age causing hundreds of different types of problems to the point where one of the first things any IT professional will recommend with a randomly malfunctioning computer is to try a different PSU.

I can't believe you seriously just said to me that hardware doesn't age and runs just as well no matter how hard you work it. If you really believe that I have some old parts to sell you at just under original retail.

There is nothing web design based that works on Windows 7/8 that does not work on XP. Nothing. Rendering is handled by your browser and the various plugins you have installed. If you're having trouble getting a website to work properly it has nothing to do with XP and everything to do with the browser you're using and its add-ons and plugins.

As for anti-virus, I've never encountered one that doesn't work on XP, but in all honesty, you don't need that garbage anyway unless you intend to go out of your way downloading software from strange sites and spam mail attachments. Throw an ad-blocker on your browser of choice, don't use IE, and don't download executables from sites that you don't trust and you've avoided 99.9% of viruses without the 'help' of invasive resource hogging antivirus suites.

One of the few things I enjoy about Windows 7 over XP is the huge variety of generic drivers it comes bundled with that help in situations exactly like this.

Point for Windows 7.