Although they get a bad wrap, MS has likely been too early on many things. Things they got right: Commodity hardware, office, and directx. Active desktop put th

Although they get a bad wrap, MS has likely been too early on many things. Things they got right: Commodity hardware, office, and directx. Active desktop put those things behind the icons of their applications making the desktop area dual purpose and thus confusing or distracting. Given the state of HTML, the newbies inability to write proper HTML, and early browsing technology and you have a recipe for instability and system crashes. They were too early technology wise, and also because they couldn't see entire application experiences being delivered that way.