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According to website Software Development Times - which claims to have seen blueprints of Midori - it is an offshoot of Microsoft's Singularity operating system. The website reckons Microsoft is building the system from the "ground up" - underscoring how much computing has changed since Windows was originally developed.

Midori will have provisions for cloud computing, where application components exist remotely in data centres. For the operating system to perform effectively, Microsoft will have to overcome many programming hurdles, such as developing a model that can tolerate interruptions to a PC's connection to the web.

"In this scenario, you establish Midori not so much as a replacement for Windows, but as the hub of a new type of distributed system which Windows machines connect into until they are no longer needed," Jeffrey Hammond, senior analyst at Forrester Research told the SD Times.