Yes, there are newer designs, but this has its advantages. Do you want whole house speakers? Remember, if you replace these wired speakers with wireless ones, you still have to plug them in! Do you have access to where the wires for these speakers went? Is that a place where you would want your less cheap receiver to be? There are a lot of issues before you start pulling wires. I personally don'tlike ceiling speakers, because they usually aren't particularly good (good in-wall or in-ceiling speakers do exist), but there are newer surround sound systems which do use them.

I would leave them, and replace the receiver with a better one. Its kind of nice to be able to have sound in any room, you want it in.

Oh, I'd keep them. And even consider upgrading them if the sound quality isn't good. If each pair of speakers is individually wired back to a central location, you could get a multi-zone receiver that would allow the control of each pair independently.