I think this is it. Up until Windows 2K and XP the OS upgrades were marked improvements over previous versions. Not just that but hardware usually improved cons

I think this is it. Up until Windows 2K and XP the OS upgrades were marked improvements over previous versions. Not just that but hardware usually improved considerably from windows OS to windows OS. But XP finally was an extremely stable platform (finally). Now you have large swathes of corporate users that can use older (2-5 year old) PCs that run XP well enough for their purposes. I used a 4 year old Dell Latitude with XP for years and it served its purpose fine with nothing more then a RAM upgrade. Prior to that I needed a new computer almost every 2 years. There's no longer the same urgency to upgrade to newer HW and software for IT departments to justify upgrading computers with the same frequency. There still isn't really a good reason to upgrade until MS pulls support for XP.