I purchased my laptop (with W7) to replace my XP desktop. I really have no need for the desktop computer except for when my daughter comes home and wants to browse the internet and that's it. Considering it is for browsing only, it will probably have Linux Mint or Ubuntu on it. In fact, this may happen this weekend now that I'm thinking about it.
It has a Pentium 4 with 512mb of ram. It will cost me about $60.00 or more to upgrade to 1gb of pc133 sdram plus the $39.99 to upgrade to W8. With that said, the rest of my hardware is slow and old. I won't have to spend a penny if I install Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Avast for Linux is free and so is Libre Office, FireFox and many other programs.
This is a computer that I normally don't look at unless someone tells me something is wrong with it.
A person should consider the age and it's use before spending money updating an OS on a computer full of old technology.
Edit: I purchased a Dell laptop when Vista was released to replace the XP desktop. Then I purchase a Windows 7 laptop because I really disliked Vista.