REDMOND, WA — Even Microsoft isn’t immune from intellectual property theft. Pirated copies of an operating system rumored to be the beta version of Windows 7 began showing up on BitTorrent sites December 26th.Windows 7 isn’t due for official release to beta testers until sometime in January.

Notorious BitTorrent directory The Pirate Bay, of course, was an early source for the software, noted as Windows 7 Ultimate, Build 7000, by sharers who downloaded and examined it. According to Computerworld, one torrent on the site showed 1,800 “seeders” (computers containing a complete copy of the 2.44 GB compressed file) and 8,500 “leechers” (computers containing only a portion of the file).

BitTorrent users have had a “thing” for Win7 since an earlier version was exhibited at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in October. A few hours after the unveiling, files purported to be the alpha release hit the torrents.

So far Microsoft has remained mum about a public release of the beta, although a post on the software giant’s website indicates the product may be available by January 13th. Speculation continues to thrive that Microsoft will release the beta January 7th, after Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer addresses the Consumer Electronics Show’s keynote session.

The final version of the operating system is expected to ship in late 2009 or early 2010.

According to bloggers and reviewers who have received advance copies of Win7, the new OS won’t be much different from its much-maligned predecessor, Windows Vista.

“It looks and feels a lot like Vista, but adds a handful of minor performance and [user interface] improvements,” an article at AlleyInsider.com noted.

ZDnet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes revealed hardware and applications that work under Vista will continue to work with Win7, and installation typically takes less than one-half hour. In addition, UI bells and whistles include “Aero Snap” for minimizing open windows and “Aero Peek” for hiding them altogether. Kingsley-Hughes called the new taskbar “kludgey and counter-intuitive.”

“…[I]n the long run, it sounds like Windows 7 is to Vista what Windows 98 was to Windows 95: better, but not a game-changer,” AlleyInsider.com noted.