In a tightly-worded statement issued late yesterday and attributed to Kevin Kutz, the director of the Windows client group, the company said it "is focused on the value Windows Vista will bring to people today. We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than that we're working on it."

Kutz was replying to speculation that the next version of Windows -- with codenames ranging from "Vienna" to "Windows 7," depending on the pundit -- would be out before the end of 2009. The chatter was fueled by Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development in Microsoft's Windows core operating system division, who spoke to reporters last week at the RSA conference.

At the time, Fathi said the follow-on to Vista up in 2009. "You can think roughly two, two and a half years is a reasonable time frame that our partners can depend on and can work with," he said. "That's a good time frame for refresh."

Yesterday's move was a clear effort by Microsoft to distance itself from Fathi's comments, said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner. But it was hardly unexpected.

""This is their pattern. They don't want to talk about what's coming, they want to talk about Vista," said Silver.