Though the first beta of Microsoft's next operating system is likely to hit the market in mid-January, the pirated versions have already made their way to the Internet - cropping up on torrent trackers in the form of an ISO file!

The very first report about the newest Windows 7 leak was came on Neowin. net's forums on Friday. The opening message and screenshots came from someone who said he was from Beijing, China, and was identified as "+fivestarVIP".

Another blogger, by the name of Paul Thurrott, posted a review and screenshots of Build 7000 on his "SuperSite for Windows" site, naming it as the Beta build.

On Friday again, according to a search on Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, two Windows 7 Build 7000 listings were posted. Further on Saturday afternoon, one torrent on Pirate Bay showed more than 1,800 'seeders' and nearly 8,500 'leechers' - while the former term refers to a computer having a complete copy of the torrent file; the latter is for a computer that has downloaded a part of the torrent.

The comments of the users on the site and at other places on the Internet indicate that the torrent is a disk image of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, Build 7000.

Windows bloggers who have possess copies of Microsoft's revamped taskbar say that Build 7000 is what will be issued as Windows 7 Beta by Microsoft next month.