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The big tech sites are abuzz today with news of a Windows Vista promotion spotted on Microsoft.com by Ed Bott, the eagle-eyed Windows author and blogger. The banner showed an early sailing ship on the open seas, with the sentence, "At one point, everyone thought the Earth was flat," and the tag line, "Get the facts about Windows Vista."

The widespread assumption is that it's a sneak preview of Microsoft's long-awaited $300 million Windows consumer marketing campaign. But it's not, company spokesman Lou Gellos said when I called today to double-check the reports. It's simply the latest in a regular series of banners on Microsoft's site designed to drive traffic to this site about the operating system, currently headlined, "Windows Vista: Look how far we've come."

That site has been around since late January, Gellos said. Although it has been updated regularly, the basic information has stayed the same.

An excerpt from the intro:

When Windows Vista debuted in January 2007, we declared it the best operating system we had ever made. "Windows Vista is beautiful," The New York Times raved. It's humbling that millions of you agree.

But we know a few of you were disappointed by your early encounter. Printers didn't work. Games felt sluggish. You told us -- loudly at times -- that the latest Windows wasn't always living up to your high expectations for a Microsoft product.

Well, we've been taking notes and addressing issues.

The latest banner pointing to that site ran for three days, from July 18 to July 20, Gellos said. It's technically not an ad campaign, he said, just a banner pointing from one Microsoft site to another.

That's not to say that the underlying "Look how far we've come" message won't be reflected somehow in the big Windows Vista campaign. But it looks like we'll have to wait to see what hotshot ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky has up its sleeve for the Microsoft and Windows brands.

Presumably, it will be something more than a Flat Earth metaphor.