Jim Allchin responds to Windows Vista and the improved protection from malware

Jim Allchin provided an EXCELLENT response to Windows Vista and the improved protection from malware based on a recent analysis, which seemed to infer that "Vista offers no more protection than XP".  Technically, this article had some factual information, but it did not tell "the rest of the story".  Users must almost want to purposefully infect their systems, for these attacks to work properly.     

At the end of November, Sophos commented on Vista being suseptible to 3 of the top 10 viruses circulating in-the-wild.  However, Vista users must lower built-in defenses, not run any AV protection at all, plus click on a clearly suspicious email attachment (that most likely would be prefiltered as a suspicious document and classified as spam).  No Operating System's security controls can fully protect a user from themselves.

I didn't have the opportunity to beta test Vista (as my home PCs are too underpowered to support it).  However based on numerous articles and reviews, Vista will clearly offer superior security over Windows XP SP2.  By enhancing Windows XP SP2 with IE 7, MP 11, and a good AV product, users can enjoy a secure environment there as well.  I'm anxious to purchase a new family PC later in 2007 with Vista Ultimate installed for better protection and gain greater knowledge of this environment by actually using it.