[quanticle]

>You might not be able to run the latest Windows OS reliably on a 5-7 year old laptop.

That's true, but, unlike with OSX, previous versions of Windows are still supported by the manufacturer and third parties. You might not be able to run Windows 7 on that hardware, but you'll certainly be able to run Windows XP. And, unlike with OSX revisions, Windows XP will be supported for several years yet.

I have a Pentium 4 box with 2GB RAM that runs Windows XP reliably. Its been a solid workhorse for almost 8 years now. Before that, I was running Windows 2000 on a Pentium 2 that was 11 years old.

Of course, another advantage of WinTel systems is that their hardware becomes more and more supported by Linux as they age. When XP finally reaches EOL, I plan to migrate this box to Linux and continue using it as a secondary workstation.