Comments on: Experts: Don't buy Vista for the security

New Microsoft operating system is a leap forward in security, but few people familiar with it say the advances justify an upgrade.

[kyle172]

$10 bucks says bitlock will be cracked in 3 months

:)

[i_made_this]

it already has been six mos ago...

...in front a crowd of Microsoft employees, journalists and security experts at the 2006 Black Hat convention by Joanna Rutkowska who chose not to share her PoC with Microsoft at the time. Yet she proved that the only "significant security improvement" in Vista over XP SP2 is insignificant in fact.

[guyfrom2006]

A security SmokeScreen

No matter how many security features you keep adding to an OS, it is not possible to stop malicious code from executing. How does the OS know a code is malicious or not? Friend or Foe? This kind of concept could disrupt functioning of normal programs such as games.

NetAlter is developing a browser which will offer the best secured environment to be developed. So even if your OS is unsecured, so long as you run applications within this browser, no hacker or virus can get you.

[samiamtoo]

Anonymity

This comes at too high a price:
http://www.netalter.com/technology/UniId.htm
I can this technology as potentially useful in a corporate environment, as an alternative to maintaining several intranets. However, some of the most insidious and malicious entities on today's internet are governments themselves, and this technology plays right into their hands. When it comes to my personal internet business, I will take the risk of black hats gladly in return for anonymity on demand.

[Ron3462]

Don't Buy Vista for the Security...

As I have stated numerous times, I am sticking with XP Pro on my customer built HP PC & XP Media Center on my custom built Dell E-1505. Both of the units have NIS '07 (Norton Internet Security 2007) installed along with and not limited to Ad-Aware SE Plus & Spybot S&D among others.

In addition, Symantec will be releasing Sonar sometime in early February, which will be available via liveupdate.

I wouldn't trust Windows Defender as it's track record is marginal at best.

The bottom line is stick with XP as long as possible. The only time anyone should go to Vista is when it's installed in a pc with SP1.

Any comments would be appreciated.

[renegadesoundwave]

Vista's security lets' third party vendors access to your hard drive.

Vista's fire wall is One Care. If you read the EULA, third party vendors can with Microsoft's approval access your hard drive to read and upload files to their servers. With XP you can stop it with a good fire wall (not xp2 firewall), but with Vista, you don't know what files are being accessed and what information is being uploaded by these third party companies. Microsoft has never released their names or how many third party vendors have the access key. Plus if you read the EULA for Media Player, everything you play on Media Player 11 is shared with at least 9 different vendors and the RIAA or the MPAA could be one of these vendors. Microsoft will not tell us who these vendors are but they are collecting info of all your songs and videos stored in a data file which is then sent to Microsoft that includes your GUID and IP address. It calls out when you load a movie or song. How can you call this security. Bah Humbug. It is my computer, what right does Microsoft have to allow themselves and third party companies to take personal information from my hard drive? There is no way I am upgrading to vista due to privacy concerns. At least with XP it can block all this with a 3rd party vendor firewall.

[qwerty75]

WINE

Wine Is Not an Emulator.

never has, never will be.

Many windows apps running in wine run faster
then on windows, especially network apps. This
should not be surprising since the bloat of
windows is gone and only a very thin layer for
rerouting OS API calls is added.

Wine is a very solid, efficient system.

[dotmike]

White hat hackers lack the skillz

Inviting legitimate hackers to examine the security is like asking
a domestic dog to babysit a child.

It may cause a bit of consternation, but most of the time it will
lack the wildness to do any damage.

But you wouldn't go getting a wolf or dingo (wild
undomesticated cousin of the dog) to do the babysitting, now
would you.

The corollary here is that out in the wild, the black hat wolves
are grinding their teeth on the last shards of Vista's mangled
bones, ready to release an onslaught of botnets once the new OS
has reached critical mass.

And they're not going to let anyone know they can, are they.

[benjiernmd]

Then which one will I buy for security?

Can CNET experts please review all the available OSes in the market
and compare them against Vista? Please?! I am about to buy Vista,
but I can still wait for the Leopard. I also use Windows 98, ME,
2000, XP, Suse and Ubuntu.

[thedreaming]

Quickie Review

95, 98, 98SE, and ME: Dump them. Microsoft no longer supports them so no new patches will be made for them.

2000: Keep. It's good to use in a business enviroment.

XP: Keep. Use third party firewall, antivirus, antispyware/malware and keep up with your updates.

Suse: It's not bad, it's not great, but it is linux.

Ubuntu: Keep. It's easy to setup to pretty much do everything you need to do. Use it instead of xp for your internet related tasks.

Bottom Line: Use XP for gaming, 2000 for business, and ubuntu for web surfing.