Advice Requested on Life Expectancy of a PC Windows System

[Chuck Guzis]

Hard to answer.  I just installed WinXP POSReady2009 on a Neoware CA10 
thin client with 1 GB memory and a 800 MHz VIA CPU.  It went without a 
hitch and MS claimes that maintenance upgrades are good through 2019.  I 
do continue to get MSE upgrades as well.

The system was a problem only in that modern up-to-date browsers require 
SSE2, which this old CPU does not have.  Fortunately, most vendors keep 
archives of old software around, so I was able to install a 2103 vintage 
of Opera and Adobe Flash.

And various flavors of Linux or BSD can continue to run even on 
relatively old hardware.

For me, the part that matters is old peripheral support.  There aren't 
too many new systems that are manufactured today with legacy floppy or 
real parallel or RS232 port support, which is why I keep these old 
things around.

--Chuck