Linnux is marvelous, but I need my "mainstream" operating systems for all my "mainstream" software packages and files I must share with others. *sigh*
My husband and I were talking about the amazing amount of work we got out of our humble Commodore 64 running Geos back in the 80's! There's still a LOT an "older" computer can do just fine for you. Gaming and graphics drive it down.
My machine here at work gets funky all the time because I work constantly with high-res photos and am slowly getting into video. That will REALLY bring it (a Dell Precision 390) to it's knees. I warned my supervisor I needed a quad-core, but did she listen? nooooooo! I'm due for new workstation next year, but with budget cuts, etc. I think I may have to wait another year!
@Androids -- yeah, both dial-up and broadband on the same machine is cool. I would be more squeemish about broadband on a Windows machine, because they are "attacked" so often. My home computer with broadband is a Mac, and it's a blessing, because (so far) they are less likely to get viruses (not that they are THAT much more stable, especially the newer operating systems).
At work (I'm part of a big Ivy-League university) we've got firewalls and stuff up the ying-yang and they STILL get hit). Last year the web server got nailed and was out for almost 6 months!!