I'm not foolish enough to predict the end of Microsoft but perhaps, Lord willing, it will shrink back to a more fitting approximation of its name. I have been a Micro-phobe for decades so my previous laptop, purchased four years ago, initially arrived with no operating system... plus the promise of the vendor to help me load Linux onto it. Though that project was a moderate success, many of the accessories, like the DVD player and cam could not be activated. I caved and purchased WinXP and have been relatively pleased with it.
Having learned my lesson, 6 months ago I purchased a shiny new ThinkPad with Win7 64 bit installed. Much to my surprise, since this is my second Win7, little of my legacy work software worked. Repeated efforts to install virtual machines and dual boot XP failed. My shiny machine was basically worthless for actual work. Scanning the usual sources of help, I found many many people in similar straights. (Now in defense of MS, my most important software is an old statistics package from SPSS that runs on 16bit Windows.) So first take-a-way - your key software may not run on Win7.
After successfully hosing up my system, I unpacked the recovery disks - yes ThinkPads still include disks. I installed the Win7 operating system - but this time, it happened the disks were for 32bit. I wouldn't think that mattered, but now everything works.
My point... Microsoft is not interested in supporting your legacy software and they are moving away from it. Make plans...
Just for fun I tried running my SPSS on Linux... and even without any Windows software, it runs just fine. So, if you are interested in preserving your legacy Windows environment, you probably want to look into Linux.
Next time, The Cloud... :)
