Originally Posted by Chroder

Well, it certainly is an improvement. I think it's probably the best "next release" they've ever had.

A lot of people just look at the new fancy GUI and think it's automatically better, but honestly, the core system has been improved quite a bit from what I can see. Though I am disappointed that some of the major features that were supposed to be part of this release didn't make it (like the new file system). At least we can catch them later and install them easily.

MS is taking a new approach to the way they develop their software, every feature is a kind of "module" that can just be plugged in. This means that there will be less major releases (ie. Win 98 -> Win XP), but more minor releases that will add new features (ie. that new file system). So I hope this new technique will help reduce the number of bugs, decrease the time between new feature releases, and up the community moral towards Microsoft.