You're describing Microsoft's Longhorn project, at least in the beginning. It was going to be a whole new everything, with advanced features like WinFS getting shelved as the project schedule kept slipping, ultimately ending as the half-baked XP facelift known as Vista.
Longhorn was never slated to be nearly as revolutionary as what I had in mind. However, Longhorn's fate might prove wrong my statement about Microsoft's engineering (management) talent.
