I have been given a Windows XP laptop, which still works fine for web surfing and general office tasks but is there anyone using it for the DAW and if so what issues (if any) do you experience?
I still use xp on a computer running Cubase 6.5
It is offline most of the time, I plug in a USB wifi dongle if I want to update. It’s rock solid using a Motu 828mkII and old drivers. No issues at all, but no new plugins for years may contribute to that.
Basically, you have to apply a lot of optimisations and disabling of services, which are generally unnecessary for W7 onwards.
Still using Xp with cubase ai4,just added a mr 816x to my mr 816csx via FireWire and boom 16 track recording
Does it work in Standby mode?
In theory I have it on an old laptop that I didn’t touch for many years, but in practice: no.
I even used the official Windows 7 beta from the very moment on when it came out, because it was so good. 
I tried the LongHorn beta and managed to crash SX3 many (many) many times, which was interesting but it was likely the drivers that were the problem (I was using an old Hoontech device).
I never got to use, nor even saw a Windows 7 beta let alone knowing the codename.
As for Win8, I got it when it came out officially and now 8.1 made it a “real” OS.
I have no idea about Windows 10, do you?
The problem with XP is not so much security and stability (I can find programs to help there) but the fact that developers are quitting support for their programs and the “workarounds” are always clunky. This is not to mention using PATA drives and very slow memory really kills productivity since you must wait until everything boots up and then your virus protection takes an hour to scan.
XP standby mode still works so that means I can get on with my day-at-the-office, work-from-home, keep-my-job life.
Interestingly though, Hibernation in Windows 8 seems to only last about 20 minutes and then the computer starts up and switches off, weird 
Never had to use standby mode.
I just read about Windows 10:
http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2014/09/30/announcing-windows-10/
I wonder how Cubase will work inside the new Desktop Switcher process.
For W8, between the BUILD version and the beta, there were 100,000 changes, and that was relying solely on their internal stuff and the masses of ‘phone home’ telemetry data they received.
However, telemetry data only enables them to identify what works well and what people are having difficulty with, and so know what to tweak, but not what could be better ways of doing things. All that had to come from within.
With W10, they have a feedback app that allows them to get structured feedback data from more than just some experienced testers, and they appear to be very responsive to it. This is good, because it means that they can get mass suggestions from outside their spheres of thought, and thus they can respond strategically to its aggregated trends, rather than just logistically to awkward functionality implementations. That means W10 has the potential to be an excellent OS, rather than just a ‘cover all scenarios’ workhorse.
Of course, MS will still do all their focus-group usability testing with all sorts of user skill levels, because users of the feedback app will still be the more technically oriented users, who have their own bias as a result of that.
For example, many technical users had built up a lot of dependence upon the start menu in W7, not realising that its use was being deprecated even then by the increased functionality of the taskbar. So when W8 came around, many technical users whinged about the menu loss, whereas telemetry data from millions of users showed that over 60% of W7 users had got the subtle hint and based their program launching around the taskbar, so having a full screen taskbar was not such a conceptual leap.
Unfortunately, having failed to see the writing on the wall and modify their functional dependencies with W7, many so-called technical bloggers and commenters took to whingeing about their loss, rather than what their readers may find useful about the new OS, with the result being a largely unwarranted bad public perception of W8.
This is not unusual, as anyone who appreciated the advantages of having a larger screen on a phone will know, because the majority of bloggers basically canned the original Samsung Note as too big to be useful at all, often completely ignoring the positive comments from actual owners of the devices. Some were positively over-the-top rabid. Now even Apple is belatedly selling millions of such ‘you will look like a dork using one’ phones!
I think the same reactionary thinking ‘greeted’ the arrival of the new mixconsoles, because they ‘mixed it up’ with the traditional ‘look like a physical’ mixer layout on previous versions. To me, they were a way of actually using a touchscreen in the studio to control a session, without having to do any configuration of remotes or use dedicated hardware controllers. I wish it had a more flexible internal window configuration, where a user could pick whether they wanted touch-friendly or traditional looking functional blocks in their own spatial arrangement, but at least it was a step in the direction of having multifunctional windows with choices, rather than the ‘Model T’ (‘you can have any color you want as long as its black’) fixed mixer layout.
I was originally just going to just comment that with the 100,000 changes W8 had between two releases, whatever new functionality W10 provides can change dramatically at any time, both at the human and program interaction levels, but I got side-tracked!
I just use Classic Shell, bit slower than a native method but OK since I have increased my hardware capability.
The MixConsole will improve, but personally I’m hoping for a revamped project Window and Inspector (not to mention Key Edit window).
I’d like to be involved in W10 testing but I believe there might be a consumer preview around the corner so I will wait for that.
Cheers