Microsoft recently dropped two strong hints that the next version of its Windows operating system will arrive in 2009, up to a year sooner than anticipated.

The hints might signal Microsoft’s intention to cut its losses with Windows vista, which customers, especially large companies, have grudgingly accepted or shunned.

The company has long said that it wants to release Windows 7 about three years after Vista, and most outsiders had pegged 2010 as a likely arrival year for the new OS. But recently in Miami, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates reportedly said in response to a question about Vista, “Sometime in the next year or so we’ll have a new version”.

And in announcing plans to extend the availability of Windows XP Home for low-cost laptops, Microsoft said it would retire the OS only after June 30, 2010, or one year after the release of Windows 7, whichever came first.

The annoucement’s wording implies that the company may be targeting the middle of next year as a release milestone for Windows 7.

Microsoft has divulged few of the changes planned for the new operating system.