Sort-of with you, Beagle. Windows 7 Home Edition works well for me. It replaced XP Professional, and did almost all I needed (one little download filled the gap). I tried Windows 8, couldn't get on with it (I understand they've fixed some of the sillinesses, but I'm not going to invest my hard-earned in finding out).
I gave away the Office 2007 I bought for this PC, and fished out the Office 2003 (I think it had another name, but it's from that era). I couldn't get on with 2007 and the array of drop-down tapes and the fact that they kept moving all over the screen. i'm a simple soul, and I can get all the "functions" I use regularly on two toolbars at the top of the page, where they stay put regardless of what I'm doing.
I even have virtually the same layout for Word and Excel, and Publisher isn't that different.
Just when I thought I'd have to give in and change, MS (bless 'em) brought out a plugin for my version that allows me to read and save .xlsx and .docx files.
I'm sure I'm wide open to all kinds of nasties as a result of using the old versions, but thus far have lived a charmed life.