Why not wait for an official statement ?
I mean, its all nice and well to start speculating, but why base your opinion on statements from a techie which are most likely incomplete and fully out of context (no offense to the techie ofcourse) ?
In this case I think the only reason why people are seriously questioning all of this is because MS has done something like this before. Do we still remember the "Active desktop" on Windows 98 ? And most of all; what eventually happened to it ?
Personally I seriously wonder if this information is accurate. And if it is how much it would really influence us. I mean; if there's one thing MS learned its that backwards compatibility is important. I conclude as much from several issues like including their virtual pc application and an XP image with every copy of Win7 professional.
So even if they do try to roll this out in favor of .NET I don't think it means .NET will suddenly cease to exist. Just look at vbscript. They have serious plans of dropping support for it, but not in the near future.