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Due to poor response to the marketplace and decades of legacy issues, Microsoft must either radically change Windows or risk its collapse

Calling the situation “untenable” and describing Windows as “collapsing,” a pair of Gartner analysts Thursday said Microsoft must make radical changes to the operating system or risk becoming a has-been.

In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the Redmond, Wash. developer acts.

“For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable,” said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled “Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve.”

Among Microsoft’s problems, the pair said, is Windows’ rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft — frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new OS — hit the “reset” button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.

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