The machine I'm using at the moment was running XP a week ago. I got fed up after McAfee demanded that I pay another £30 to protect it from viruses. I also was getting annoyed because every single bloody time I switched it on, there was yet another Windows update to download, which seemed to make the system groan.
I had a Linux laptop, and was happy with that, so I put the same distribution on this desktop machine. It runs beautifully now.
Regards, Ivan