I've just bought a Win7 lappie (having been using Win XP for years). I'm surprised (aghast?) at how much of the old architecture from numerous previous Windows generations is still part of the core under the covers (and AFAIK, Win8 is still the same).

IMHO it is about time MS ditched the past and came up with a truly modern operating system that has a fundamentally clean, sleek and fast architecture (that eradicates the dreadful muddles that exist inside Windows); is inherently very secure; has a variety of styles of user interfaces to suit differing needs / preferences; etc. etc.

There is no good reason why they can't do the above whilst at the same time providing backwards compatibility (e.g. via virtual machines) to legacy software.

Changing the covers and tweaking a few bits is not enough. At some point MS surely must bite the bullet - the sooner the better. Or are we still going to be seeing this archaic architecture in 20, 30, 50 100 years time?

Reading through all this - think I will just stick with my Commodore 64!! ha! ha!

I wish I had kept my Amiga 1200 ...

1st computer I worked on was an RCA one like this:

http://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/full_record.php?iid=doc-43729570c3451

I was a computer operator at Harrods in 1970 and yes, the console really was like the one in the picture.