Both of you mentioned problems that laypeople like myself had. I never needed it because (1) I had a good [legal] Xp/sp2 disc and (2) the later one I found in the thrift shop was an "Anniversary Edition" with Xp Home and Pro, sp2, and Xp-64bit- all for USD one dollar. (How's THAT for ROI?) My wife had already bought a returned/serviced Toshiba laptop in part because it came with Xp after Vista was released. All our H/W so far works fine, and all the S/W we want has Xp versions still available, so far.
In the past MS has kept updates for older OSs online, and I wanted to make sure that was still the case, that 'dropping support' didn't mean the older Tuesday stuff was gone. But I do go back far enough to recall when server space was more expensive, so some sites would do housecleaning, I guess, and there would go my upgrades!)
BTW Mr Gates or whoever isn't fooling me. "No more blue screen of death" didn't mean 'no crashes', it just meant the crashes no longer produced the BSOD. Plus, the SysRestore has saved me many times, so I dont need a newer OS for that, as you know.
I once thought of going Linux but: the learning curve would be steep, I would certainly have driver problems, and I have a life outside computing!
TUVM for all your helpful notes.
Doug