Heheh Wow that story just reminded me of the eMachines computer that was purchased, it hardly lasted more than a year.
I've actually tried that experiment in my family as we had bought a computer with no OS on it so it was cheaper and I had installed Mandriva on it. The problem I ran into immediately was that the printer was so old and the manufacturer (Lexmark) had such an old Linux driver that it didn't work at all and cloud printing wasn't available then. If the exact scenario happened now with my HP printer I'd probably still have linux on it.
I remember wow-ing my bros too when I showed them the whole 3d desktop cube and writing with fire on my desktop.
Technology is definitely advancing with Linux so perhaps the "Year of Linux" will come soon. Especially with gaming companies like Valve looking at it in regards to Steam OS with a serious mentality. It''s always welcomed in the community, well, as long as you contribute a fair bit (Google...).
Windows 7 was a hog but compared to Windows 8 and Vista it definitely looks like a diamond in the rough. Actually I recently had to wipe my laptop's HD around New Year's since a bad install of Windows 8 to 8.1 had damaged my partition tables beyond repair. And reinstalling Windows would've been a pain since you had to order the recovery CDs ($60 CAD why?!) and worry about a UEFI boot if you decided to dual-boot. So I just wiped the damn thing and it's now my first time using linux on my laptop without dual-booting. Working fine so far.
I remember all the machines I had with XP lasted a good 6-7+ years which was amazing. People still running the OS today is definitely a testament to how great that OS is. I also remember when I was in Grade 5 everyone in class was excited when they saw all the computers being installed from 98SE to XP.
XP has run it's course IMO and Microsoft's new endeavours have been hit and miss lately. So Linux may seem like the natural successor.
Even when XP is gone it'll definitely represent the times when I developed a fondness for technology. I also loved the days when I had to figure everything out. It all started when we had our first computer and I wanted it to run Runescape on it. It was a 400mhz rig but the game ran in Java so low quality was 300mhz and high quality was 500mhz. I was always fooling around with every little bit trying to squeeze every bit of juice it had left to run that damn high quality setting.
When I got my XP machine I wanted to see more improvements so I just kept on fiddling with everything. I guess that's how I got into IT and now I'm an IT student and gamer!