[capitainenemo]

No idea why they are doing it, but I can say that on upgrading an old Windows machine, I discovered their financial software was completely non-functional and no windows emulation mode on the executable would work. I ended up running it in virtualbox in "seamless" mode in ubuntu+wine set to autolaunch the software... plus a windows share. For some reason that worked with no issues. The alternative would have been purchasing a half dozen upgrades and going through them one by one, with repeated database upgrades, for software that was working fine.

Probably not too much risk if the XP machine is isolated. There could also be licensing issues with upgrading, as well as unmaintained proprietary software.