, christ_child wrote

I think Windows 8 should be a wonderful OS.  God hoping.  But let me ask another question.  How hard would it be to just rewrite Windows?

If Microsoft made a new OS that wasn't Windows nobody would buy it.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's greatest success and biggest curse is that it's backwards compatible with binaries that someone bought for a previous version - and they go completely out of their way to make sure that even old versions of software for 32-bit Windows XP continues to work on top-of-the-range 64-bit Windows 7 machines.

To be honest, that's exactly the same reason why Linux has never overtaken Windows. People ultimately don't give a damn about Windows or their OS, they just want to run their apps, and if your OS won't run their apps, they won't buy your OS.