There’s been a great deal of speculation in recent weeks about forthcoming surprises from Microsoft for Windows 7 that they’ve so far held back.

A source very close to the upper echelons of Microsoft has told me today that there is a new ‘skin’ coming for the OS, currently at the release candidate stage, though they have been keen to point out to me that there is no absolute proof of anything one way or the other at this point.

So what does this mean for Windows 7?  It would mean that the interface and functionality will remain unchanged from this point but that the look and feel is set to change.

How can we prove it?  Well for starters I’ve been banging on about the look and feel of various aspects of Windows 7 for months now, and was getting increasingly frustrated that feedback I was submitting through the beta programme was coming back with the answer that X, Y or Z, for instance the drab and flat new superbar was “by design”.  This now makes much more sense.

Also those people who were speculating about a more radical UI overhaul would not have got it.  Microsoft would never have invested so much time in the new superbar, being a major interface component, if it was either a red herring or something that would be completely and unceremoniously dropped only a few months later.

Also if you compare this historically to the XP and Vista betas, Microsoft did the same thing with those too, having a beta version that maintained the same style of UI as the original and then introducing something of a radical departure at a late stage, but not with major functionality changes.

What we still don’t know is what this new skin for Windows 7 will look like and when we will get to see it.  My guess is that recent talk about a build tree split, with seperate build trees now for the release candidate and RTM versions explain this and that we won’t have to wait very long before it’s released.  I certainly hope not anyway because of the Power Users Guide I’m writing.

For now, we can but wait and see what the next few weeks bring.