It's time for XP to die. That OS was released in 2001, and it is now 2014. Name one other OS that made it that long? That had three Service Packs to it's history?

In my opinion, a PC's (or laptops) life is somewhere between 3 - 5 years depending on how top of the food chain you were when you purchased it.

As far as ATM's running embedded versions, etc.. I am not going to lose one minute of sleep over it. Those systems access and security is well known. Honestly, it's easier for a crook to roll in a completely counterfeit machine to collect account numbers and pins.

You would be surprised at what Windows 7 will run on, but it's generally hardware memory limitations where you get into trouble. 3GB's of ram is pretty much the minimum for a Windows 7 machine. That's about 25% less than what I think Vista needed prior to it's Service Packs.

I think 80% of the complains about Windows 8 is just noise. It's different. They are not going back, but their biggest mistake was trying to put a Tablet interface on a desktop computer. Make the OS "smart" enough to see that there's a keyboard and mouse hooked up, dual monitors.. etc.. and boot straight to the desktop and skip the tiles.

If there's a touch screen, no keyboard, boot to the tiles, and give the end user a choice to change it anyway they want.

Underneath, Windows 8 is a sound OS. They just missed some details.

Rod