a question about softtabstop

I am using gvim 7.2

my vimrc settings

set tabstop=8
set softtabstop=4
set noexpandtab

but i found that when i type a TAB after a non-blank character it
didn't insert softtabstop spaces

for example

1. i\t
2. in\t
3. \t

the end colum of these three lines are just the same ,why?

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