Let me start by saying I'm not totally versed in these matters, but my perspective as a lay person merits discussion. I'm a loyal PC user and I'm pleased with my most current XP running machine, lasting more than 6 years and going strong. I've avoided buying a new computer precisely because I'd heard that Vista was a flop. However, as I understand it, one of the major problems dogging Vista was that PC's that weren't up to the task of running it were being sold with it. Is this true? If so, has Microsoft addressed this with its clientele or by making 7 easier for less snazzy machines to run?

Yes its true. Before Vista came out, PC makers were advertising their machines as "Vista ready", but when Vista was launched it became clear that they were only able to run a stripped down, basic version of the new OS. MS faced a class action lawsuit which they either lost or settled.

Its not really as much of an issue now, as pretty much any machine you buy will have the resources to run Vista or Win7. Win7 is easier on system resources than Vista, but its still ridiculous how much they use.

More of an issue in Vista is that *many* things changed from the way they had been since the beginning of time. So you had to learn them all over again.

Microsoft has to do this at some point, it couldn't keep the Page Formatting command on the File menu forever after all. (Tho putting the print feature where they did was dumb).

Likewise, at some point, they have to stop supporting (poorly in some cases) applications from 1999 which were written when we could trust application writers.

I have no interest in upgrading to Win7 for at least 12 months. With each day, I'm a little more prone to going to linux instead of win7. It's free and only gets better all the time. The "pay us lots of money" culture on Win7 doesn't really appeal to me.

The best thing MS could do would be to design their entire OS from scratch and provide emulators to allow for people to run legacy software.