XP was a well designed OS indeed. I only bought Win7, cause when I bought my comp, there was no win7 yet, but upgrades were promised for Vista users. So I bought a Vista Business, so I could downgrade at anytime to WinXP, and when Win7 came out, they shipped me the Pro version for free. It was a really good deal. 3 "windowses" for the price of one.
Otherwise I'd still be an XP user up to this day. Win8 looks like MS is aiming too much for the touchscreens and XBOX gaming, so I guess I'll give it a pass, and maybe give Ubuntu one more shot. Once popular games make their way on Linux, Windows is doomed.