You can often repurpose these old machines to do other things. Take a look at this.

I have an older machine in the kitchen that is connected to the Internet (since I don't have a house phone any more I rewired the phone plug to be a data port) and I use it for looking up things when I'm working in the kitchen, for watching movies while I cook, i.e., using Windows Media Center or streaming NetFlix. It's the backup to my main office machine.

There is another computer that belonged to the kids and still has Win XP on it. That machine plays nice with older software and pieces of equipment, so it gets used for specific tasks to do with less vigilant early versions of programs as far as making personal copies of discs I own, etc.

SRS