Windows 7 appears to look a lot like Windows Vista, judging from a video purporting to show the "Ultimate" version of Microsoft's next operating system that has popped up on the Internet and drawn more than one million hits on YouTube.The three minute and 48 second video was first posted on YouTube in January. It claims to show Windows 7 Ultimate at "Milestone 1." For the record, Windows 7 isn't slated for release until late 2009 at the earliest.

Not much happens in the video's first 30 seconds, then a screen appears showing the words "Windows 7 Ultimate", version 6.1, along with Microsoft's usual licensing disclaimers. The video then runs through an assortment of screens.

The most interesting, and credible, part shows a scrollable menu that's subdivided into areas such as TV and Movies, Pictures and Videos, Music, Tasks and Online Media. It doesn't feature the sort of touch screen interface that Microsoft demonstrated for Windows 7 earlier this week at the All Things Digital Conference.

But beyond a few new bells and whistles, what's most noticeable about Windows 7, at least as it's shown on this video, is how similar it looks to Windows Vista. That's bad news for Microsoft, if it turns out to really be the case.

As I noted in a blog post yesterday, the early word from Microsoft indicates that Windows 7 will include many of Vista's useless CPU and memory munching "features" and then some. In other words, it will be time to upgrade the hardware again when the OS arrives in the next year or so.

The fact is, most users don't want all these extras, especially if they require hundreds of dollars worth of additional hardware. Computer users -- in business or at home -- in general want a machine that can handle word processing, e-mail and the Internet, and that's about it.

The video was posted by a YouTube user named Zhouxiaohu, and appears to be sourced from the blog Thinknext. Thinknext has posted other screen shots and videos that it claims show aspects of Windows 7 at various stages of development. (Oddly enough, Thinknet's site repeatedly crashes Internet Explorer ... hmmm.)

At any rate, here's the link to the video. Judge its veracity for yourself.