New
#11
At my current job, I'm using a Dell laptop with Vista Enterprise on it. Prior to starting this job in Jan of 2009...I worked for a company and used XP by choice as I didn't want to use Vista.
The biggest issue that I can see in your post really is the crappy hardware. I've been fortunate to work in software development shops that cannot keep super old hardware around for all that long...so upgrades came every 18-36 months. For me, I think the slow hardware would be the bummer rather than the actual OS. I think I could work just fine on XP, Vista or 7. There really isn't all that much in Windows 7 that would make me more proficient or able to do my job in all honesty.