technology laggard

Two weeks before I think there will be a sale, I finally gave up and bought Windows 7. I had installed a trial version and it worked fine except that it knocked out my internet connection. I bought my computer in 2004 but it is apparently too historic for Windows 8, which I admit I am not excited about. It has been years since my version of Windows XP would load its own programs and I had to drag my favorite card games to the desktop to play them after they mysteriously disappeared (too many start up programs apparently). Microsoft's Fix It program detected all sorts of problems but could not fix them and I finally realized that they were serious about not supporting XP. Even the validation tool did not work. The final straw was when the font size on the desktop icons and web browsers kept increasing and the taskbar disappeared when I tried to fix it. It also would not allow itself (Media Centre) to be replaced by Windows Professional without a complete install. It took me hours to move from 5 GB of free space to 20. Why did I have 5 versions of Visual C++ that I never used? Of course what I did last created the most space - move the fashion pics and the music files to the external Verbatim drive. I was complaining last week about all of this but I feel better about Microsoft now that they have said that they will put Windows 8 on a USB external drive. They strongly imply that it will run from the USB and I might not have to buy another computer unless the motherboard gets worse.