If you would update to 8, which is more of a TS interface with an ap store, why not windows 7? You could have a 64bit OS with a nice quad core+ cpu which is impossible in XP. Then you could virtual machine xp on top of that and have the latest and greatest. XP is rather dated to say the least. The only reason to run it is if you have older hardware such as a pentium 4 single core processor on board.
Welcome to being a victim of sensational misreporting. Win7 does not upgrade itself randomly or without telling you. It will schedule an upgrade, then tell you about it and give you a chance to cancel it beforehand. And using something like https://www.grc.com/never10.htm you can also disable the scheduling.
> Win7 does not upgrade itself randomly or without telling you. It will schedule an upgrade, then tell you about it and give you a chance to cancel it beforehand
Technicaly true.
Practically, it will sneakily get a human to eventually let the upgrade in. Just as we've been seeing all around.