Just a quick question before Hell breaks lose, and comments hit the 1000's mark :)

I know that every product's success is ultimately measured in how much money it made, and with Windows that figure is mostly affected by the corporate/enterprise partners/buyers. However, the overall image of anything MS related these days are determined virtually by the whole Internet, by the voices of the blogosphere, forums and word of mouth.

The first part isn't too hard to achieve, just make W7 very friendly to sysadmins. Easy to maintain, remote install, massive automatization, self-healing, space for customization, et cetera.

The second is tricky. That's the sum of all the little annoyances, bugs and the experience&feel of the product. If the users experience it slow, then they won't care that in the showcase videos it was running with 120 FPS. If they have trouble installing a device/driver, they won't care, that you've a new framework for drivers. They won't be interested in any of that dot-net-thing if they have to sit and wait for 43 minutes just to install the .net framework. They won't care about new technology if they can't experience and feel the fruits of that new technology voodoo-something.

And for that I think the best is to let the "power user base", the developers, add their ideas, addons and useful bits to W7. It can be done via brainstorming a'la ubuntu. It can be done through wishlists, bugreports, open betas. But bottom line, it can be done.

Plus MS has the possibility to influence things that the linux crowd can't. Like device manufacturers, drivers, and such critical components to the overall Windows system.

Well, my €0.02s hope it'll make a real fortune for the users :)