The ability to boot on a single core with 1GB of RAM in under 5 minutes?

Perhaps they could take FreeBSD, perhaps with a customized Mach kernel, and add a fancy, easy to use and intuitive graphical user interface?

oh, wait...

What other features would you suggest to Microsoft if they are to have a hope for recovery?

A crust that rises.

Yeah sure, straight after Duke Nukem Forever comes out.

1. edit the boot screen from "windows XP" to say "windows 7", then just re-release it as the new version and continue to refine XP's codebase. problems solved!

Ronnggpq:

Emacs

It's 2008. Dump the triumvirate of Windows design retardedness:

1. Drive letters (we are not using CP/M)
2. Backward slashes for directory separation (we are not using DOS)
3. CRLF (we are not using a typewriter!)

21. Microsoft Bob!
22. Clippy7 /ducks

I'd really like a smarmy paperclip that will pipe up all the time and suggest things. Say, it pops up while posting on the Intarwebs and says, "It looks like you're trying to spell the word 'ridiculous'. Can I help with that?"

Windows isn't fragmenting your files, it's sharing them with otherwise unoccupied sectors on your hard drive.

Another legitimate use of file sharing in my opinion.

nano!!

Butterflies!!!

Notepad!
wait...

Windows 1.0 doesn't count.

Since most of the humor impaired anti-Linux crowd have moved over to Digg, I'll play devil's idio... err... advocate.

Yeah. Like that's a good idea... When you put Lunix on a computer, guess what? It doesn't come with drivers. The Fortune 500 businesses that make drivers for their equipment only do so for Windows and you can't use those drivers on Lunix. So what happens when you buy a brand new scanner or printer, or video card? You have to rebuild the kernel, pray to the gods CUPS and SANE, throw holy water over your shoulder and hope like hell that you don't have a $200+ brick sitting on your desk. Think that's going to make things easier for Microsoft because I don't.

It's like Ballmer said, "Applications! Applications! Applications"! Personally, as an important executive in a Fortune 500 company, I don't have time to waste recompiling kernel after kernel and then installing software from raw source. I want things to work and I want them to work RIGHT NOW! My time is worth a lot of money and I need programs like Photoshop and Flash so I can write betas of databases my company creates so I can get the imagination-free coders under my charge to build things like normal people want. (Never let a database developer start coding until you have the prototype fully functional in Flash!)

On top of that, Linux has ZERO support for system and application sounds. If there is one thing that will kill a database application making it in the rough and tumble market, it's a lack of action sounds. Our database sports 1400 sounds for every activity imaginable in the database. My personal favorite is the heartbeat sound when you go into bullet-time mode while scrolling through the database itself. I had to fight a few non-visionaries about putting the sound (fired them actually) into the database! I'll never understand why developers are so bad at grasping the importance of flashiness in a database application. Can you do that in Linux? HELL no! Linux just sucks for databases.

I wouldn't touch Linux with a ten foot barge pole otherwise it might infect my beautiful and innovative mind. It seems like people who use and like Linux, lack vision and lack creativity. Instead they're perfectly happy with their grey screens from 1984 and all text data. Ugh! NO ONE in their right mind likes that kind of thing. We need the kind of flashiness you see in Vista's Aero Glass interface. That is the pinnacle of innovation in the computer world. NO ONE has ever done anything like that on any other OS.

So as funny as you think your stupid comment is, I can tell you're just an idiot.

What other features would you suggest to Microsoft if they are to have a hope for recovery?

A Linux kernel.

And a pony.

1 - 10. Where a 1 is a housewife and a 10 is an XP kernel developer.

Actually there's just 4 levels:

1 - Windows
2 - OSX
3 - Ubuntu
4 - Any other *nix

Uh oh. Looks like someone let the monkeys escape the zoo again and they didn't write Shakespeare.

For one thing, the Linux kernel has more drivers BUILT IN than Windows includes with their OS distribution. To say that Linux has no drivers illustrates just how limited your experience with the Linux kernel is. Not only that, but the most popular and best Linux distributions actually compile nearly every driver as a module by default so most of your hardware with the exception of the very newest hardware, should work. Printers and scanners, are supported by "drivers" that are NOT part of the kernel at all. Your glib reference to CUPS (printer drivers) and SANE (scanner drivers) doesn't even make this suggestion at all. You sir, are a moron.

"Develop" a database in Adobe Flash? That's so idiotic I don't even know where to start. You're not a developer, you're a monstrous joke. It goes without saying that you are not a Fortune 500 executive. If anything you're running some kind of sham business if even that. I suspect you're some kind of troll. And... You sir, are a moron.

Sound and databases? While they could be an option in an application, they're NOT required. When David down the hall wants TPS reports on his desk by the end of the day, it doesn't matter if there's sound or not. And "bullet-time"? WHY? What purpose would something like that serve? Frankly, the BIGGEST database platforms for high reliability are on some form of Linux. They're not on Windows and they're not MS SQL. MySQL and PostgreSQL rule the open source world. Oracle is the top of the commercial world. But it goes without saying that... You sir, are an idiot.

Vista Aero Glass!? You have GOT to be kidding. It's so lame compared to Compiz-Fusion. But beyond that, what would any of this have to do with DBs? I'll tell you what: NOTHING! Once again... You sir, are an idiot.

I think on the meta level. It's all the same to me. And me as well. ;P

My video card only supports CGA you insensitive clod!

If I were you, I certainly wouldn't go around telling everybody you know the state of Dick Cheney's penis.

It's a little uncouth to kiss and tell.

2Good4U96 is trying to fire a rocket at you.
Accept or deny?

EGA mode

Well, what with most screens being widescreens now, that would have to be 'WEGA' mode.

Don't you mean a GNU/Daemon?

Because they aren't made by MS? So what you're saying is that in order for Win7 to be successful, MS should outsource it, or publish it under a non-MS name? Brilliant!