Just this past week, I re-imaged the software on some older computers for my family. The computers were becoming very slow & clunky running Windows, but perform quite well running the latest desktop edition of the Linux Operating System, Linux Mint 17.
If you’ve got old hardware that you’re considering tossing out or making a paper weight, you might like to consider Linux as an alternative. It’s light & fast, & comes with an inbuilt Office Suite. The interface is quite similar to Mac OS, & it is easy to learn. You can download Linux Mint 17 from www.linuxmint.com/download.php