With Windows XP support finally winding down, the firm recently revealed that about 30 percent of all PCs in use worldwide are still running the aging OS. But at its company meeting, the real figure—27 percent—emerged, which means there are about 405 million XP PCs in use worldwide, an eye-opening figure. But Microsoft is determined not to let this happen again.

So while many of us believe that Windows 7 will neatly slip into XP's role and become the next XP—partially because so few businesses are interested in Windows 8.x—Microsoft will instead push its newer OSs and let Windows 7 die a quicker death. It believes that by "listening" to customers with Windows 8.1, it can make this happen, and that the business-oriented changes in that version of the OS put it over the top. We'll see, but I've yet to hear anything like that from the enterprise.

Microsoft wants Windows 7 to die a quick death