The word on the Internet is that Microsoft is rushing to get Windows 7 out the door in an effort to offset the negativity surrounding Vista.  No matter what Microsoft does with Windows 7, I'm not sure it's going to matter. 

Assume for a minute that Vista was a great operating system.  Would it do anything significantly better than XP does?  Did XP do anything significantly better than Windows 2000?  Windows 98? 

How about creating software that lets me do new things?  How about creating software that lets me do my old tasks better and faster?  This is what Microsoft promises with each new version of Windows, but they can't deliver.

New versions of Windows aren't improvements, they're just different.  You can't hold on to market share like that. That's true even when your market share is well above 90%, as Windows' is currently.

Look back a few years to Firefox version 1.  People said Firefox would never make a dent in IE's dominance. Microsoft said that they were done updating IE separate from new versions of Windows. Then Firefox started getting market share and suddenly we saw IE7 for XP, with news of IE8 on the horizon. 

What's so great about Firefox?  Well, it's not evil.  It's open source.  Anyone can improve on it, and many people have, either by adding code to the main codebase or by creating extensions.  Firefox is more secure, with no ActiveX controls or other dangerous holes that can open your system to spyware and viruses. 

Ultimately, the question is not where the market is, it's where is it going? Is that a secure 95% market share that Microsoft has? Or is it a de facto 95%, where one-third of the market is wishing they could switch, but just aren't sure exactly how to jump out yet?

Once a competing product gets to about 15% market share, those users represent too large of a segment to be ignored by solution providers. Firefox was at about 15% market share when webmasters and content developers took notice and started creating compatible sites.  It was about that same time that Microsoft announced they'd be releasing IE7.

I see the same thing happening once Linux has 15% of the market. That 15% market share represents millions of people and billions of dollars to vendors and techs. When Linux hits the 15% tipping point, Windows becomes "one of the options," rather than "the PC."

It will happen.  The only question is when.