Gartner Disses Windows, But Where's The Breakthrough OS?

Microsoft is in serious trouble because Windows Vista sucks so bad:

[from Windows is 'collapsing,' Gartner analysts warn by Gregg Kelzer]

Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.

In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts.

I just doubt that Microsoft has the resolve to build a new OS, breaking the tie to Windows, which is really what is needed.

In the meantime, anticipate an increasing defection to Mac OS X and Linux.

If a new OS is to emerge, that would challenge the established triumvirate, I wonder what it would be like? Are we going to move past hierarchical folders as the primary organizational structure for information? Isn't there something better than files? The windowing UI metaphor is now conventional; what's next? Is there no one working on this stuff at Microsoft Research?

An OS based on being ubiquitously integrated into the Web is plausible, at this point. Where there is no distinction between 'local' and 'network'. I guess that is more likely to come from Google, than the lumber titan of the last, now past century, Microsoft.