It was there, just not particularly well implemented. I've seen some really good Linux tiling WMs, as well as extensions for GNOME that make tiling simple, I can't understand why Microsoft is incapable of doing the same.
At least among the people around me, the money which would previously be spent on a new computer is used to buy a tablet (mainly iPad) instead. While I'm not sure if the way Microsoft is approaching the tablet-market is right, I don't think they're wrong if they're betting on tablets overtaking desktop/laptop computers in a not so distant future.
Sigh. Yes, when that future includes cerebral neuroimplants, tablets will replace desktop PCs. Until then, that's as ridiculous a notion as believing that tractors will replace steam shovels, or that motorcycles will replace cars.
Touchscreens, and by extension tablets, are not useful for desktop computing. It ranges from amusing to mildly annoying when people in online comment threads believe otherwise, but it's a cause for full-blown market panic when Microsoft executives believe otherwise.
I can't tell for sure if it's what you are implying, but I don't believe tablets comes close to replacing desktop computers in terms of functionality, nor do I think they should be used for "desktop computing".
However, I believe they have the potential to cover the needs of most people. Saying that tablet-sales will overtake other kinds of devices, and saying that tablets are fully capable of replacing such devices are very different things.
I think tablets are a threat to a large portion of the laptop PC market, but laptops have already replaced desktops in most applications that can benefit from portability. If someone is using a desktop, chances are they need a desktop, running an OS that's well-suited to it.
With that said, you make a good point about laptops and I should probably not consider them to be equally threatened in this situation, the way I did in my first post.
Alas, there will be no one to program these PCs/devices in the future because kids won't grow up with code capable environments (well, maybe they'll be able to code on the web ala Kahn's academy).
A tablet (maybe with a keyboard dock) can replace PC's for a huge amount of the type of work people used to do on home PC's. E-mail, surfing the net, movies, music, chat, photos, typing up school papers etc, are all that is needed by a large portion of computer users. People are still going to have their work PC's, but the size of that industry is going to shrink relative to the overall market for personal computing devices.
But I also believe that Apple's gouged out a large chunk of customers via ipads and osx based computers.
There's also the question of what is wrong with Windows 7 for anyone to leave it? I can't find supporting numbers right now, but how many years did it take for XP's user base to abandon it?
Additionally Valve is starting to prop up linux's weakest sales point and make the consumer friendly distro's gamer friendly.
I guess my overall point is that a lot of little bites and not one main culprit is responsible for eroding Microsoft's market share.
That's... pretty astonishing.
How this correlates to my HDD to SSD experience is that my workstation is already fairly optimized ( not overclocked mind you ), so biggest improvement was possibly in random seek and since I don't run MySQL or any other server system on the computer that does thousands of file op's/second the improvement was relatively marginal.