Windows Vista hasn’t been the most successful operating system. Since day one it has been plagued with poor support, dwindling sales, and even users who are downgrading to XP after forking over the cash for Microsoft’s latest blunder.

Apparently the boys in Redmond have misunderstood the anguished cries of countless Windows users and have decided to make what looks like a whole new version of the same product.

As of yet it seems like nothing short of a repackaged version of Vista with a few improved media features and a new boot screen. However, the early beta releases of ‘Longhorn’ looked like XP too. So the images and video might not be an accurate representation of what 7 will look like. On the outside it seems like little has changed, but until someone does a top-down analysis of the system, there’s no telling exactly what changes have been made.

The whole thing doesn’t look too interesting at the moment unless you’re a Microsoft exec. looking to punish those who leaked this ‘gem’ onto the internet. In which case, don’t even bother. No one is really looking forward to it anyway.

Click on for a few screen shots.