Oh? Where did you get "an 11 year old version of Windows"? I have XP in a VM.
Windows XP was released in 2001, it is now 2012 which makes it 11 years old.

If Vista hadn't been such a flop XP would have been retired years ago.

Microsoft products do not evolve; you buy one then wait for the next version, which may or may not work OK. All you generally get in the meantime are security patches and bug fixes; even the "service packs" are mostly cumulative versions of patches and fixes already released.

In the case of XP they did activate the Windows firewall by default on installation; they also made it more aware of SATA drives for installation purposes, but apart from that just patches and fixes.

It is commercial software after all, and they make money out of selling new versions, not enhancing old ones.

Unless you can get a copy free and have the IT equivalent of a death wish, I would give Vista a miss.

Windows 7 is the current version and is very good. Windows 8 is still a bit of an unknown quantity, as the last beta wouldn't load on machines that didn't support hardware security features. The previous two did with no problems.

I would advise against trying the beta on a production machine, as it certainly doesn't support traditional multi-booting (even with other Windows versions!). In theory it should work in a VM, but I sure as hell don't trust Microsoft that far in a production environment!

I know that the Linux community is working on this, but all I have really heard of so far is a commercial development from RedHat/Fedora.