Just update to Windows 7. I hate Vista and Windows 8. Hopefully, I can skip those and hold out until Windows 9. I contemplate moving over to Apple IOS, but the prices keep giving me pause.
No need to. The same old hardware runs any modern Linux distro fine. iOS is just an annoying front end on top of BSD, you can configure window managers in Linux to look just like iOS if you really want. Its free and everything just works.
I made the switch right after buying a a laptop with XP and XP was just a less stable version of 2000.