I mean I love Windows 7. Windows 7 is an awesome operating system and I hate Windows 8 with the greatest of passion, but Windows XP is a great Windows OS too and wondering if it is really dead now?
It isn't dead so long as you keep it behind a meaty firewall and so forth. Same goes for Win2000, for that matter. Keep them protected and they'll continue to serve. My retro-game box runs Win98 and never, ever connects to the internet for any reason whatsoever. I've got the "Windows 98 Storage Driver" for USB and I sneakernet any files I need to it.
WinXP and 2k (well, maybe 2k) aren't that dire yet, so, enjoy.
You just won't get any patches for any particularly egregious bugs or problems with the core OS itself.