When and how should I upgrade my old Windows Vista laptop?

Yasmine has a six-year-old Vista laptop that does all she needs. But time is running out, and she finds Internet Explorer 9 limiting

I'm (still) on Vista Home Premium SP2. My Acer Aspire 6930G is nearly six years old but it does everything I need, except I can't upgrade beyond IE9 and that is increasingly limiting. I could change to another browser but I find Firefox quite flaky and would rather avoid Google products if possible - and I understand that Chrome support for Vista is going soon anyway.

Can I still upgrade to Windows 7 (and then, later, onwards and upwards) and, if so, how? Yasmine

Windows Vista shipped in November 2006 - nine years ago - and Microsoft will stop supporting Vista SP2 in April 2017. I don't expect the wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanied the end of Windows XP in 2014, because of Vista's tiny market share (it's roughly the same as Linux). None the less, Vista users should be planning to migrate to something else.