How could you possibly know there isn't going to be a similar situation with WP8? Do you think all the people who bought into WP7 thought MS was going to drop all software support for them in such a short amount of time? No, of course they didn't.
Each release promises to be better but the truth is, WP is still years behind and not only are they not catching up, they are falling further and further behind as the pace of iOS and Android development is increasing.
Then they didn't do their research.
Windows Phone 7 was on the same kernel as Windows Mobile. Then they moved to the Windows NT kernel. As for being years behind... how? Please tell me how the OS is years behind.