I use XP Pro at work and Vista and XP pro at home. W7 is streets ahead amd much more user friendly once you have got used to it. Like Vista on W7 you can set the properties of a programme to work in compatability mode which wo9rks for my ancient version of Corel.

If you have a 64-bit processor than the 64bit version is the one to use (otherwise why did you pay extra for the 64 bit proc?) Main advantage is you can pack in more ram and hard disk although the word on the street is as long as you have the minimum requirements W7 works better with limited resources than XP.

W8 is unknown territory – only mad dogs and Englishmen buy a new version of windows before the first service pack comes out. MS tend to alternate between good and bad versions 2000, ME, XP, Vista, W7 so on form W8 is down to be a dodgy one! Plus the main changes from W7 are the interface to suit touch screens so it won't neccessarily make it run anything better, but it may make it less convenient on an ordinary computer.

Finally, the new versions of Office are streets ahead of the old ones, once you have found your way around. I imagine they are much better for new users as well.

Neil

(Who still secretly thinks a BBC where you could switch on, hear a double beep, and type *WORD and be word processing within five seconds was still the high watermark of performance, if not user friendliness).