I think it'll play out like the XP-->Win7 transition: consumers are almost all on Win7+, because XP hasn't been sold bundled on a PC in over 3 years. Businesses

I think it'll play out like the XP-->Win7 transition: consumers are almost all on Win7+, because XP hasn't been sold bundled on a PC in over 3 years. Businesses are still on XP (they have "downgrade rights" to install XP) and are dragging their feet because it's a painful migration. So I think businesses will be on Win7 for a LONG time, until commercial support expires. That would mean at least thru 2017 or 2018. And businesses will pressure MS to maintain support even longer, because they "just switched" to Win7. I don't see this being a big win for Linux or Mac though either. The drag on upgrades in businesses is because of compatibility and training issues. A switch to Linux / Mac is 100x more disruptive to a business than a switch from XP --> Win 7. The real disruption isn't linux or mac, it's iOS and Android. I'm convinced that it'll be easier for tablets to grow a keyboard and some multitasking, than for PCs to "slim down" while maintaining compatibility with normal Windows applications.