Ugh... this is so stupid. 8 year old OS instead of Windows 7? I can only imagine one reason to choose that: stubborn. You've learned XP and understand it. You're afraid of change and fear Windows 7. You never actually tried Vista and fear it based on "rumors" from its early days where nVidia drivers were poorly written. Honestly, some of the complaints I've seen for Vista are just user ignorance. Hate UAC? Turn it off; sure, it offers no protection, but its not less secure this way than your beloved XP. Don't like where they put the menu items... sorry, just adapt it won't take long. Don't see a "run" option? Hit Windows+R or hell, just enable it on the start menu options. Laugh at these examples? They were part of an article explaining why Vista is so bad posted on C|Net / ZDNet. This is where people get their information from folks, and if they're reading this junk then they probably believe it and will choose XP over Vista. I'll grant that XP is a bit faster, but in 2009 we have dual core 4GB systems as entry level, with quad core 8GB being more in line with what most THG users probably have. How slow could one OS be on this hardware to make you absolutely hate it and want XP? The difference is measured in ms, and in games we're talking 1-2 fps. You can tell the difference between 57.8 and 59.2fps? Really?
Hopefully Windows 7 will let us move on. This XP vs Vista debate has gone on far too long and the large base of stubborn XP users has impeded progress / change. Fact of the matter is Microsoft rewrote its kernel, hence why drivers needed to be rewritten. You can't deny that every software company is writing programs to run on Vista and Windows 7. You're stuck in XP, it won't be long before programs have to be released in two stages: Windows 7 first, then XP.
Plus, if you're running more than 4GB you need XP x64. The driver situation here is actually worse than Vista x64. You don't get any compatibility points for XP x64.