Thats seems kind of like a lost cause considering that MS themselves no longer support it
Umm, not sure what that this has to do with mainting older software - our software works fine with Windows XP.

As for the new GPU - dx 10 is very different from anything that came before. Should be interesting to see what sort of software we will have to play with in a few years time.

Unified shaders promise some choice GFX - lets see how it pans out.