Microsoft claims it's selling Windows 7 at a clip of seven copies per second (that's more than 150 million copies since October 2009, according to the company's math) and it probably doesn't want anything to interfere with that rate--certainly nothing like rumors that the company's already sweeping the decks for Windows 8.

Yet those very rumors are circulating today, courtesy of a purportedly leaked slide deck posted June 26 on a Website called Microsoft Journal, run by one Francisco Martin Garcia, who bills himself as "Microsoft VIP Tester." According to the slide deck, internal discussions about Windows 8 are already well under way, with planned features such as a display that adapts to ambient light for maximum visibility, ultrafast boot times and using facial recognition for log-ins. Also mentioned are USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 3.0.

On June 28, the blog Microsoft Kitchen also posted some purported Windows 8 slides, which it said came courtesy of an Italian Windows site called "Windowsette." These slides include an image of a Mac-like "Windows 8 Prototype Machine," and reiterate the Microsoft Journal's slides' discussion of facial recognition log-in.

"Windows accounts could be connected to the cloud," reads one of the slides posted by Microsoft Kitchen, followed by the bullet point: "Roaming settings and preferences associated with a user between PCs and devices." That would certainly fit with Microsoft's oft-plugged "screens and a cloud" strategy, not to mention make it easier for a user to migrate from device to device within a household or office.

Under the title "Trends shaping Windows 8 planning," another slide details the market's "explosion of form factors," and the collision between "enterprise and personal worlds." Another bullet point states, "Connectivity is assumed" and "Content experience is personal." Target devices will apparently include laptops, all-in-ones and slates.

How real are these slides? They're extraordinarily detailed, and stamped with "Microsoft Confidential" and "Windows 8 Discussion--This is not a plan of record" on every page. Of course, they're also riddled with grammatical errors, so if this is a genuine document, it's definitely not one meant to be shown to partners or clients (I'd hope).

Microsoft has a long-running habit of refusing to comment on Windows 8. Nonetheless, rumors of the next-generation operating system have been drifting around since the launch of Windows 7. Back in November 2009, Microsoft Kitchen published road-map slides--supposedly shown by Microsoft during that year's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles--suggesting that the next Windows Server and Windows 8 would be released in 2012.

Around the same time, a number of blogs and Microsoft-centric Websites focused on the LinkedIn page for one Robert Morgan, "senior member of Microsoft's Research & Development team," which stated that his current projects included "128-bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan." A number of bloggers promptly declared it a Smoking Gun, leading to the LinkedIn page being yanked; for its part, Microsoft refused to confirm whether Robert Morgan actually existed.

I surmised at the time that the Robert Morgan page was a fake; trying to build a 128-bit architecture within three years for a new operating system release would be something of a quixotic endeavor, given how mainstream processors right now are firmly focused on 64-bit.

With regard to these current slides, they certainly embrace many concepts that analysts and pundits see as coming in years ahead. I'd certainly take this leak with the requisite grain of salt, but there's also a little too much here to discount entirely. What do you think?