Just a question of curiosity.
Do you keep UAC on or off?

Getting rid of that nonsense is one of the first things I do on any post-XP machine and I've never had an issue because of it.

Ack! *spits*

Sorry, UAC just reminds me of this "Are you sure?"

Seriously! heh. That clip accurately depicts just how helpful the UAC is. Can't imagine why anybody would willingly put up with that crap.

Thank you. That tells me all I need to know.

The discussion was about speed and the OS. When a component breaks down it prevents the PC from running, and no OS change will do anything (or be possible). If you have to take things out of context then I assume you agree with my actual point.

I'm not sure what you're saying about web design. Are you talking about web design software, or about browsing, which shouldn't be problematic on XP for a while?

As for security, power users who choose to use XP should have no problem with security as long as there are security programs which support XP. I haven't seen anything about such support ending, though I assume it will happen at some point. It just won't happen immediately when Microsoft ends support.

For lay people, I'd move them out of XP. Already moved my Sister to Vista and will move my father to it sometimes in the next few months (I had two spare copies of Vista Home Basic).

No need for central heating in your house then!

Sadly for my heating bill, only the amp gets hot. The rest just gets really loud.
Again, just wrong. The OS patched to the extent that it's going to reach to be stable doesn't need further upgrades unless you're reliant on the OS developer for components that I mentioned earlier that are readily available for free from third parties. Maybe you see it as a treadmill because you're attempting to justify your personal trend-seeking, but that's a prison purely of your own making. Once you have something that meets your needs sans compromise, you're not on a treadmill, you're on a free and clear road.

And, shiny? Who cares?
The irony is splendid. There's never a time to toss out what works for you. If you're incapable of maintaining that thing, then maybe putting it in the hands of someone who can would be a win-win proposal.
Avira and Avast (and Spybot and Malwarebytes for that matter) should both install on XP without any problems.

I just turn off UAC all together. I know what I'm doing and I'll accept the responsibility and repercussions for any mistakes I make. It's just an idiot-check for people who can't or won't do that.

It's good to have a AV at your disposal to check any .exe's you do happen to download. Avira lets you add a Explorer-context menu scanning that you can do on any file on a Right-click. I keep the resident scanner off and just scan anything I need to as I need to. This allows my PC to run MUCH faster.

Thank you too for answering the UAC question. Also tells me all I need to know.

It all depends on what "works for you" means. If buying something new upgrades your experience and you think that's worth the price, then by all means junk the old one and move on. It's a good thing too because that's what makes technology advance. If nobody wanted to buy better tech we'd be in a rut.

I know that for many people that "ancient piece of junk" as darthspudius called it may be all they feel they need, because they don't know better, but put them on a new system with an SSD and a decent amount of RAM and they'll realise that there's really no need to wait for the PC all the time.
How much faster?

Seems like updating to 7 isn't much better in this respect. Avira for example quotes April 2015 as end of life for XP and January 2016 as end of life for 7 (Vista support already ended). AVG, from what I've seen, says it will continue as long as there are a significant number of XP users, while Avast still has definition updates for Windows 9x (but no software updates for quite a while now).

Right now I'm on 7 and I'll change when hell freezes over, which is EXACTLY what I said when I was running XP and 98. :P

You hate your father and sister that much? I would understand Win7 but I wouldn't give the abomination known as Vista to my worst enemies. Do make sure that UAC is at least completely and utterly turned off or they both end up in isolation in lunatic asylum. I almost did when I had to constantly go fix my sisters computer for over a year. Windows 8 ups the ante even more.