Why I Need To Keep At Least One Windows XP PC Running

I have a video capture device called the DVD Xpress DX2 that I bought many years ago.  It captures from my analog video camera (you know, the kind that actually let you take more than 20 minutes at a time), and it works.  But the company that made it, ADS Technologies, seems to have gone toes up, and there are no Windows 7 drivers for this gadget.  I can either buy a more modern analog video capture device, or keep this Windows XP notebook working.

On the plus side, reserving the XP notebook for analog video capture means that I don't bog down my primary notebook when this is going on.

UPDATE: A reader reminds that Linux drivers are available.  I was planning to install VMWare Player and CentOS 6.4 on my Windows 7 notebook anyway, but this is worth trying.  Of course, VMWare reminds you that you can run Windows XP applications forever by running them under VMWare.

For those who wonder why I am bothering with Microsoft stuff at all.  My strong preference is for Linux.  (I have been using Unix/Linux for development since 1984.)  The problem is that my students are using Microsoft Office to submit papers, and when I collaborate on law review articles, my collaborators are almost always using Microsoft Office.  (Thank goodness the days when I had to collaborate with lawyers using WordPerfect are now just a bad memory.).  Theoretically, I could use OpenOffice to open, mark up, and return those papers -- but there are just enough subtle little issues that develop where compatibility is almost there that I can't realistically escape Windows.