Paul, I agree with you on all counts except one: support for an
obsolete OS.  I ran into this problem with Windows 95.  I was content
with it and was still able to web surf on my old machine (a 166 MHz,
128 MB RAM), but one day I ran into a problem (a virus, perhaps) and
I could not get support from Microsoft, even if I was willing to pay
for it.

I eventually went through re-format and re-install the Win95 OS, which
is not much fun at all for most of us.  Then you have to re-install,
re-input and re-configure all sorts of things to get it back the way
you want.  While it's true that an upgrade to a new OS will not
necessarily eliminate this, at least you will have support available
with the more recent OS.

Michael Concordia