@DeathByVisualStudio: I know you have a strong desire to be negative, either in general or at least with regards to Microsoft, but could you at least RTFA before making inane comments?
"Switching to the NT kernel should have no impact on existing WP7 applications as those apps have no direct access to Windows CE. This really should be a very seamless move for both applications and end-users. The ODMs (original design manufacturers) and carriers are really the only ones who have significant work to do since drivers or any other native mode software they wrote will need to be ported or rewritten. But things written with Silverlight/.NET/XNA should just work. I guess there might be a caveat for apps that use some esoteric feature that Microsoft decides to deprecate, but since most such features would only have been exposed in Mango I doubt Microsoft would have exposed them at all if they didn't plan on carrying them over to WP8."
Near term, WP7 development is not likely to change. Even long term, the switch from WPF or Silverlight to WinRT is on par with the switch from WPF to Silverlight to Silverlight/WP7. If you can't make the transition, you shouldn't consider yourself a developer.
