I hope so. They clearly learned that the delay between XP and Vista was way too long. I think they learned that the shorter delay between Vista and Windows 7 was beneficial too.

Having the shorter releases seems to work very well, at least it has in the OS X world. The ability to release new features and get them in the hands of users faster than once every 3 or 5 years is a big improvement.

It's also nice to see them drop the price. At the old $99 or $129 level, an OS upgrade really needs to justify it's existence. Many people would just hold out and buy a new computer (especially if you only paid $400 or $500 for it). At $40 it's much easier to get people to update without waiting for a hardware refresh.

> The price is much lower than for previous versions of Windows, this makes me suspect that we should start expecting new releases of Windows much more frequently, similar to how Apple does it.

I absolutely don't think so at all. I think the lower price is because they want people using the metro app store, because they want an app ecosystem to make them money the way Google / Amazon / Apple do right now. They dind't backport Metro so Metro apps are Windows 8 only, so it is in their best interests to get as many people on the platform as fast as possible to maximize app development and maximize profits from app sales.

It may also have to do with the fact that there is an App Store, which will be a new, probably significant, source of revenue. And, it makes it a little easier for someone who's not sure about the radically new UI.