Windows Vista Security

Windows Vista – two words that make many PC users cringe.  Ok, so aside from possible issues that may have occurred before the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1) which has dramatically increased performance, reliability, and stability (on my system at least) one thing I have noticed is that for perhaps the first time the major concern with Windows isn’t security, but instead drivers and productivity.

Windows Updates have been issued for Vista and everytime I see that update icon I always think to myself “oh geez, I’m going to have to reboot”, but to my pleasent surprise most of the updates have been for Windows Defender – defintion files which do not require a reboot.

It wasn’t until this Tuesday (6/10/08) did I have to reboot for a few (3) security updates after weeks of being reboot-free.  Before this week, there were 4 (including SP1) in February, 0 in March, 4 in April, and 0 in May – all figures are for 2008.

Meanwhile, on the other hand you have OSX which recently (May) received 10.5.3 which patched about 40 security bugs.  Before that, we have 3 in February, 4 in March, 2 in April, 1 in May (10.5.3), and 1 so far in June.

Now as many of you know, I use both operating systems daily (if anything I’m leaning towards switching to OSX) and I should also note this article is not about comparing the two operating systems security.  I just find it interesting how the numbers appear when you set them next to each other.  Which leads to me to my original point of Vista security, I really do not think it is security people are conercned about with Vista but moreso hardware, driver, and productivity issues.

So why don’t you use Windows Vista?  If you do use Vista, how do you like it and what issues have you encountered?  Leave a comment!