I still have a WinXP 64bit as my main OS, with Office 2003 too, same as the author. I have a Win7 machine, for gaming, not directly connected to the internet.

I still have a WinXP 64bit as my main OS, with Office 2003 too, same as the author. I have a Win7 machine, for gaming, not directly connected to the internet. I hate it so much it's never going to be my main OS. I'm forced to use Win10 at work, and I hate it even more. I'm slowly switching to Linux (in a VM in WinXP64). From linux, currently I'm only using Firefox without a desktop environment; anything else is too difficult, too incompatible, too slow or too bloated. To me, Linux desktops really look and feel a lot like Win10, execept with a lot more bugs and lacking Windows' Control Panel (what's left of it, anyway...). Anyone focusing on constant updates must be really young in my opinion. I understand your point of view. I was like that too. When you grow older you will start to notice how the OS you grew up with could do 90% of what your current OS does, using just 1% of memory, 1% disk space and maybe 10% CPU. At some point you will want to stop all this constant fight to get minimally better features (or even less features) at the cost of ever-faster new hardware and, at the same time, ever-slower UI. Only then you will be able to understand my point of view.