I'm a big fan of running most things inside of VMs. You never have to reinstall when you move to newer hardware (or to backup hardware), and virus checking is more robust because you can copy one system's boot drive onto another system's non-boot drive with a couple mouse clicks and scan it there. Some versions of Windows 7 come with VM support for XP, but I prefer to run Linux on the bare hardware and Virtualbox to run VMs. I bought a 3-pack of Windows 7, and have separate VMs for trading, software development, and leisure. Just make sure you buy plenty of RAM if you want to run several VMs at one time.
In 2004 or so, while working for a large company in the IT department, I started telling people that Microsoft was already on the decline and some company ( possibly Google) would displace it. Almost a decade later, they appear to be in full retreat. It was not clear to me exactly which company would become the new technology leader so I suggested possibly Google. (I think that while Google is a solid competitor, other international companies are now the leaders - so I was wrong) At the Microsoft seminars marketing and looking good was always the biggest concern and not the quality of technology. Our company couldn't afford bad technology especially in the area I worked in. Win 8 has been a disaster for Microsoft I think. Windows has always been poor technology for power users and good stuff for those who didn't know anything about computers and didn't care. It seems they got smart after the XP upgrade and ensured that only win 8 could be bought instead of running win 7 longer. (That arrogance served them well when they were starting out, but now has become a millstone IMO) Based on curious stories that came out, I was always suspecting that they were in bed with the NSA in some fashion. Longer term that leak will kill their international business I am guessing. Hopefully they will eventually recover. How does the CEO keep his job still? The upgrade path I have chosen is Ubantu based on an interesting fellow I met who will build it for me in exchange for me teaching him about investing. Just an update. Thanks for all the suggestions.
As of today, it appears that there is no upgrade path for Ballmer either! Since IMO companies often hit a local peak when the CEO "chooses" to retire (Encana for example), it will be interesting to see if MSFT can recover from the total market cap damage of his tenure.
My dealer flat out refused to sell me Win 8 and mentioned a rumor that a Win 9 was being rushed out. I've heard that the prices have dropped in an attempt to get more sales. I'll bet you were a big fan of "Vista" also, which many companies flat out bypassed and chose Win 7. (Checkout the stats of XP instances still being used vs other Windows OSs. Pretty significant for something as old as it is.) It seems that the same "extend and pretend" solution is now being employed with Win 8. I skipped Win 6 - Vista and waited a year for Win 7 reviews before buying one. It worked more reliably. I can't wait anymore for them to get their act together - I placed an order for a custom order power machine MAC. I am very curious to hear what the banks (XP all over the place) will use now. Next time I meet with the bank mucky-mucks, which I see a few times a year, I will ask them directly and confidentially what they plan to do nationwide. It is a risk to my capital. Good luck to us all.
This days you really can get Windows 10 for example it's latest edition, it's really much better than Windows 7 for example already and for many many more other reasons I will not name here, all other upgrades depends on your mobo, memory type and SATA speed etc.