XP looks better than 7 does. And you need to pay attention more in english class. XP does not fit the definition of archaic by any reasonable standard.
However, 7 does have longer battery life on laptops. Its not a huge gain, but it is there.
Only because people fear change or are too cheap to. I used to be the same way. But after using Vista then Win7, I cannot stand to even use XP anymore.
I own the FULL RETAIL version of 7 Ultimate. Clearly my problem was that I was "too cheap".
After using Vista and 7, I almost returned my copy of 7. Not that its bad, its just not worth the money if you already have XP AND know what you are doing. Windows 7 brings me nothing of consequence that I don't already have on XP.
I take it you have pretty low ram requirements then. Soon as I have the money I am going back to 8gb. I find myself running out of ram only having 4gb.
A problem exacerbated by windows 7 heavy memory usage. XP uses less memory, leaving more for applications.
If your speaking of the 4gb barrier, there is an XP 64.