I'm assuming you're using XP and not a maintained distribution of Linux. That's pretty much officially dangerous as security updates have ceased for awhile now. You need a secure system for day-to-day computing, especially if you do banking online.
There is no proof that XP users suffer from illegal activity more than newer OS users.
From security standpoint, a home user can stick to XP without fears. Why should anyone upgrade then? Because the new software won't work on XP. And I'm not talking about games only.
I would also suggest upgrading to Windows 8 instead of 7. There are under-the-hood improvements 7 doesn't have and the interface problem can be dealt with in short order. Actually 10 may be a better bet if you hold off till late summer or early fall.
Win 8 upgrade because of performance? Don't be rediculous.
There is nothing win8 added that is desperately needed. Win 8 is not a bad OS, it's miles away from broken ME and Vista, but it's OS noone really needed.
However, for whatever reason, win8 is
cheaper than win7. Knowing that upgrade from win7/8 to win10 will be free, and win10 should be out in a couple of months, the only reason to put win8 and not win7 on a new PC is the OS price.
But here's the catch, knowing win10 will be out soon, why should anyone really upgrade from XP (or Vista) to win 7 or win 8 today? We don't know what the price for a brand new win10 license (non-upgrade) will be. Maybe it'll be cheaper than win 8.
Thus the only logical thing to do now, unless your win XP machine dies, is to wait till win10 price is revealed.
I still don't understand why someone can't be fine with DirectX 9. It worked for so many years now, I just don't need anything better.
Nokia3310 worked for so many years, noone needed anything better, yet everyone has a smartphone today. Playstation 3 owners didn't need Playstation 4 - but they still got it.
The technology moves forward. You can't stop the progress by saying "I don't need it". You do need it, you just don't know that you need it.
Plus, it's good for marketing, sales and generally ecomony. We all want to buy something fancy and new, right? Who cares if we actually need it. The world crisis didn't affect videogames industry. Why? Because there is always something new, something unseen before, something that can still sell.
About D:OS EE going x64…
There's the thing called memory addressing. Games, but also some other resources demanding software, need crapload of your RAM. It's not a strange thing. To address enough of RAM without falling apart, a piece of software just can't stick to x32.
Was it completely necessary to go x64 only with D:OS EE we can't know, we're not devs. But going x64 devs simply don't have to care about memory limitations, they don't have to degrade certain parts of the product.