Marie, I must be in approximately the same situation as you are. I have a 9 year old Dell tower that ran on XP until it died. I heard Hewlett Packard is still offering new computers with Windows 7. I went to their website and it was true, at least as of a couple days ago. I know people generally hate change but it seems many more people have been complaining about Windows 8 than they did about Vista, which I think is generally scoffed at. I'm thinking seriously about getting a Windows 7 machine. I suppose its support period will expire before Windows 8 but I just don't have the mental energy to do battle with Windows 8, being gullible enough to believe all the whines about it. I would prefer to buy a computer at a brick & mortar store but haven't begun looking there yet.