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The company's statement, attributed to Kevin Kutz, director of the Windows client team, was among the shortest on record from the company.

"The launch of Windows Vista was an incredibly exciting moment for our customers and partners around the world, and the company is focused on the value Windows Vista will bring to people today," Kutz said. "We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than that we're working on it. When we are ready, we will provide updates."

Bloggers dedicated to tracking every Microsoft twitch said the comment on not commenting was prompted by speculation about user-requested features for the next edition of Windows. That list had been solicited from an invite-only group of Windows beta testers in a program dubbed "Early Feedback Program" that started in December 2006. It included such requests as integrated antivirus scanning, plain-English error messages, and several improvements to Internet Explorer that are fixtures in rival Firefox, such as session restore.

On Tuesday, Windows beta tester Jamie Grant posted a list of the feature requests -- which blogger Long Zheng characterized as a bit like Dell's user-generated, user-ranked IdeaStorm -- on Microsoft's own enthusiast Channel9 site. The thread, however, was quickly locked by Channel9 administrators; Grant later deleted the post and list.