I don't make a habit of posting wild rampant speculation. I could give you some "higher purpose" excuse, but it would just be BS. I don't post it because I don't like being wrong. It's bitten me in the past, so I try to stay away from it. I'm gonna post this one tho, because I need YOUR help in proving or disproving these pictures. hey, bloggers have exposed fakes in politics and entertainment lately, so why not technology?
I came across this Flickr site in the newsgroups, and I've been staring in amazement. There are elements of truth here, but I lack the Photoshop expertise to make a ruling with absolute certainty. So I'm going to post this and issue a challenge: to clean up the pictures enough to read the build information in the bottom left-hand corner.
Reasons why I think they could be legit:
- If it IS a hoax, it's a pretty elaborate one. IMO, the quality of certain elements seems too professional to be fake.
- Microsoft has been hinting that there is still more to come in the UI department for quite a while now.
- The gadgets in the sidebar are in the current builds (save for the Media Player one).
- Some of the screenshots contain visual elements and styles that I've seen before but can't discuss further.
- The "Documents" menu shows the real Office 2007 document icons.
- I can't sharpen the pictures enough to read the text with certainty, but the built text in the corner appears to read: "Windows Vista (TM) ____ <new line> Evaluation Only. 570X_____________________"
- I want them to be real (hey, that can be a reason, can't it?)
Reasons I think it they could be fake:
- The person went through all this trouble to get these, and not ONE clear picture of a build number?
- They COULD be pictures from a monitor, intentionally adjusted to appear to be projected onto a screen (the one on the end of the second row has weird banding)
- There is absolutely no EXIF information in the file (not sure if flickr wipes this out on upload or not)
- A lot of the training content for Vista has already been generated (including videos in the new Help section), and I don't know that MS would spring a brand new UI like this at the last minute.
- UPDATE: Logged in user is Mikey but there is no "Mikey" user on the Login screen.
So break out your Photoshopshop skills, and prove these pictures real or fake... all I ask is that you provide proof of your claim either way, and not opinion. Sleuth on!
UPDATE: What better proof can you have than the author of the original images? Vista testers everywhere shed tears of sadness as a skin designer tells how his art was used in the hoax. That's what I get for sticking my neck out.