Consumer version delayed until early 2007Microsoft is extremely lucky that there isn't another serious competitor in the OS market, because I think 6 years between consumer OS updates is too long. They just got around to updating Internet Explorer to a beta version of 7, which finally includes some features that third party browsers have been sporting for years.
Since most people equate computers to Windows I don't think there will ever be a serious competitor to Microsoft in the OS field, and unfortunately that means that they can take their time to improve their product. Without competition they have no incentive to work faster.