I upgraded from an outdated system (Pentium+HDD) only when web browsers started giving me grief. Now I'm on a relatively modern AMD system and it does anything I can throw at it. Debian Stable XFCE4 works very well. XFCE4-Terminal is one of the best terminals out there but doesn't get much recognition. XFCE4-Terminal, Emacs and Firefox are my Big 3. I use Thunar occasionally. I use XFWM, it can act as a pseudo tiling WM with wmctrl / xdotool shortcuts.