Thanks, every1.
I re-checked the TurboTax website. It seems that their product will run on Win7, but they repeat the Microsoft party line, "Danger, Danger, If you keep using Win7, you'll be insecure." It seems that their product will still run on Win7. They go on to say that next year's product will not run on Win7. What they probably mean is that one will need a 64 bit OS to run next year's product, but since my Win7 is the 64 bit version, I should be fine.
My fondness for XP is for two reasons: Some software that run under XP won't run on Win7, such as PrintKey2000 and ImageGrabber (which I've used a lot to make tiled thumbnails for torrent uploads). There are applications with similar functionality that will run on Win7/10, but they're clunkier to use.
My other beef with Win7/10 is that in Windows Explorer, XP had the option of giving you folder size for each element in a directory; I don't see that in the newer versions, and it was a handy way to see what folders were getting too big. Sure, I can right-click on a folder to look at its "Properties," but that's clumsy. Also, When I open a directory (Explorer window) in Win7, the default starting view is the bottom of the list. My default directory sort is "newest file at the top" so I always have to scroll up to see what I want. XP would open at the top of the directory, which was much more convenient.
Finally, when you say a "clean install" rather than upgrade, do you mean wiping the disk and starting from scratch? I have all my data backed up, but it would be massive pain to reinstall all of my applications…Office, AcrobatPro, QuickTimePro, uTorrent, Firefox, etc., etc. If I need to do all that, I might as well get a new machine--which I hardly need, as it's a Dell "Workstation" that cost me a bundle and has all the capability I could want.
If you have any suggestions about how I can address these issues, I'd love to hear them. Or maybe I'm just being a whiny little boy...I've been called that before.