XP was fine.
7 is fine.
We don’t need an update for a few years.
That’s the honest truth.
Windows 7 has more OS features than I need, but in truth, once XP was patched to a certain level, it was fine. I run both XP and 7 in VM’s on a Mac - and they’re fine.
On native hardware? I’ve honestly never found a need to upgrade past XP.
On my Macs, I have no need to upgrade beyond 10.6.
So many of the OS upgrades any more are chasing stupid UI changes that mean nothing to me (and most users). What most users use and care about are applications, not the OS. As long as the OS is stable and works... what does the user care? Little.
Where most desktop OS’ could improve is their backup/recovery schemes, and OS upgrade checkpoints. Apple has the cleanest backup, Windows 7 has OS upgrade checkpoints. If we could get one OS that has both those features in one place, with 64 bit support for new hardware going forward, we might as well lay off most OS developers or have them start upgrading applications.