With all the day-to-day talk about Windows 7, sometimes I like to stop and ponder what Windows 8 will be like. After all, Windows 7 is as solid, reliable, and pleasant an OS as Microsoft has ever produced--but there's always room for improvement.

SuperSite for Windows blogger Paul Thurrott just put together a surprisingly comprehensive preview of Windows 8--based on a "mistakenly leaked set of documents Microsoft shared with its PC maker partners."

So, what are some of the highlights of Microsoft's next-gen OS? Here's one area worth getting excited about:

Startup time and power management

While Windows 7 included dramatic improvements to resume time (from sleep) and power management in general, Windows 8 will provide fast, nearly instantaneous resumes from various states and should resemble appliance performance. A lot of this work is simply an extension of what happened in Windows 7 and thus doesn't bear much discussion, but it's important to note, I think, that the sudden emphasis on iPad-like slate PCs will require Windows 8 to function more like a device than like a PC when it comes to wakeup times. One thing Microsoft is considering is renaming the power off states; perhaps by eliminating or renaming "Shut down" they can convince users to utilize built-in power management efficiencies.

I concur: it's high time Microsoft did some serious revamping of PCs' low-power and no-power states.

Obviously all this is subject to change, and certainly the scheduling for Windows 8 has been known for some time: the OS should ship roughly two years from now, around mid-year 2012.

I'll let you read the rest for yourself and decide what sounds promising. For the most part, everything about Windows 8 seems more evolutionary than revolutionary--but given its already solid Windows 7 foundation, that's not at all a bad thing.