"A new operating system..." We have three major OS platforms now, Windows, mac and Unix/Linux. If you consider that OS X is essentially a Unix variant, there are only two. The major companies are abandoning their own proprietary OS platforms (often Unix variants like HPUX) and embracing either Windows and/or Linux. The last serious independent desktop OS effort I heard of was BeOS, which didn't exactly take the world by storm. Even if someone came up with something truly revolutionary, they'd have an extremely daunting task to gain any market acceptance at this point. AFAIK, none of the products that require IE to install require it to be your browser in order to run. They use IE's components, not the browser itself. For those who really, really can't stand Microsoft, one can get a Mac (relatively expensive) or Linux (free). Then if you find you have to use a Windows application, you can get the Mac PC emulator (money) or on Linux, WINE (free) or the excellent VMWare (again money), so there are plenty of alternatives. Even Bill Gates doesn't control your destiny.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken