Probably never as of low importance in Win 7 - not really of great significance for something lasting a few seconds, default boot is fine and computers are not booted as often anymore anyways - mainly hibernation then re-logon. The Vista boot was only a picture albeit in more colours than in XP but still no progress bar nor any other exciting bits and it only served to be there to match the logon and wallpaper for completeness sake rather than any other reason.

So couriosity more than anything else? All I get as far as a true boot screen is a black screen with very small progress bar on top left and then the logon studio screen. Is this default for Win 7 or are you guys seeing something else? I really don't see any advantage for a boot screen due to the shortness of duration of this black screen. Wouldn't a boot picture prolong the boot process?

I don't think there will be a W7 version as Microsoft secured the process

One good thing about W7 is it has finally put an end to all those crappy XP bootskins