I think it is pretty obvious that businesses (and most private users) implement every other OS. Who still remembers Vista (which came before W7)? Exactly....
It also seems for every other OS MS implements something new that takes an entire OS generation to get right. Vista had all new kernel and other revolutionary things, but before W7 they didn't really get the resource hunger under control and people didn't want it.
With W8 they introduced a really new GUI and it probably will take them to the release of W9 to get that right.
That is not entirely true. and every time a see a post like this, it needs to be addressed.
"The following list describes the recommended minimum hardware requirements for basic functionality of the different editions of Windows Vista. Actual hardware requirements will vary"
The third parties and OEM's sold PC's with the "recommended minimum hardware requirements for basic functionality".
At the time, I was working for a small PC shop. We did not sell them with the bare minimum, and when people asked why, we told them why. They bought our PC's and were quite happy with Vista.
Go back to XP days and you will find the same thing happened, yes, actually, completely identical.
Most everyone was running 32G of Ram for Win98 and when they dropped XP in, it acted the exact same way
and when they added more ram (typically 64M to 128M) they were much happier.
In the end, by SP2 everyone knew that XP ran phenomenal on 512M of Ram and that is what most people upgraded too. Since then, RAM has only been an issue for gamers, Video/Audio rendering, and Virtual Machines. However, at least 1.5G to 2G of ram is recommended to Run XP extremely well for everything else today.
In fact, Win7 and Vista run pretty well on 2G, but 4G's is what I recommend.
These are all indisputable facts.
Vista was a perfectly fine OS with some small flaws, but it was NOT entirely MS's blame
99% of that blame lay at the OEM's, 3rd party developers of software and drivers that drug their feet to get things working in Vista due to many changes that occurred in Vista from XP. They were all perfectly aware of these changes well in advance, and they ignored them, completely.
WinME was a completely different story and that OS was a complete joke, and abandoned as quickly.
But Vista was NOT ME.
As for Win8, the OS works perfectly fine, the GUI is different, but not hard.
There are some small annoyances, but the system is in no way unusable.
As for how long 7 will be around, no body knows that, it could be 2 years or 50.
Now, IF MS can pull off the Modern App with full cross platform capabilities, of Laptop/Desktop to Tablet to Phone?
AND, Developers actually create stable working apps that are good enough?
Trust me when I say, all bets are off.
I already know many who are getting Surface Pro's over iPads due to the ability to install whatever they want and have access to Remote Desktop stuff for work.
The message is getting out what a Surface Pro is capable of over the competition.
And if they don't take head, they will suffer.
Edit: Yes, many iPad owners looking at the iPad Air and then seeing the Surface Pro and getting the Pro, and
being happy with the choice they made.
So, while a lot of you are sitting here in LALA Land thinking you know so much, there are things going on without your assistance and people are happy.