Whoa, there, ex-pat. I'm not shilling for MS, and I think that 15+ years' experience in the IT field has given me more than enough "clues." People do complain all the time, which is their right, I suppose. I just feel their complaints are misdirected.
Some users seem to expect that their OS should slice, dice and julienne -- if your PC keeps giving you a BSOD, you must have an unusual configuration, or something isn't installed correctly. I have access to a corporate helpdesk, and I know plenty of home users who, as long as they're on a semi-recent version of Windows (2K SP4 and greater), have very few problems related to the OS.
Sure sounded like it when you claimed "...if you've been using Windows XP for the past couple of years, you haven't seen a blue screen for a while."
I've been working with computers since 1978, and, as an IT professional since 1990. I too have some "clues" about MS and the quality of thier OS's.
MS has earned ever bit of the scorn that they have received over the years for thier less than stellar performance in providing stable operating systems.
As to the "unusual configuration" - motherboard, harddisk, mouse, printer, monitor, graphics card & ethernet card - all approved by MS and at the correct patch levels - Windows XP SP2 and all patches. Thats it.
However, you raise an interesting point - the Joe Sixpack user, who only wants the stupid PC to work will have no idea what to do when the BSOD comes and MUSt spend a great deal of money to have a technician troubleshot the system. If he is savvy enough to insist that all components of the system are MS approved - he still has NO guareentee that the system will continue to function in one years time as updated drivers can crash his system and he will have no way of finding out which one is causing the problem.
If MS had followed common standards of programming - a lot of these problems would never have occured as the OS would not accept the hardware / driver without compatablity! Furthermore - that the system can not identify which driver was attemting to perform a specific operation which caused the crash to occur, but CAN take the time to dump the system, etc...) is nothing more that a sign of MS not caring about the trouble thier OS causes.
The ONLY thing that has improved at MS over the years as far as the consumer is concerned is that the Help Desk Support now actually takes the time to attempt to solve the problem - unlike 15 years ago when you were just SOL if you had a problem - of course DOS was pretty easy and the user had actual documentation to consult if the system wouldn't boot. Now, if it won't boot, even an experienced user (not IT) is stuck with boxing it up and sending it in . . .