Most users including myself (till recently) had truly no clue about the differences in o/s, from XP to Windows 8, other than we either like it or hated it. It's the look and feel of the o/s we're talking about, and not what the o/s actually does, since we equate everything together. WRONG. There are third party utilities which can bring that special feeling back.

For me, it began when I decided to take that special offer and get Windows 8 PRO for $45.00 CDN. I was an avid XP fan and knew that Windows 8 did not come with a START menu. But, because of my frustration, I realized there were several third party utilities which allowed users to restore that missed start menu. I'll mention just two Classic Shell from http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell/ and Start8 from http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/ The first is free and the one I use, the second is under $10 US, and has other program which make it even more customizable. These utilities work for XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, so you can have that same feel good ease of use with the latest o/s.
Of course you'll still benefit from some certain improvements that the newer o/s adds and use the older features as if you never upgraded.

There is one other utility called Teracopy from http://codesector.com/teracopy which is extremely useful for those copying or moving files around. Unlike the old Windows copy program, STOP. You should read and try it out yourself (then thank me later).

Hope this helps at least one person understand that you can have your cake, and eat it too, Mindblower!