"Hero, I, as us all, can clearly see that you are vigorously Pro-Vista."
I'm not pro-Vista to the point that I'm completely blind about some weaknesses. I absolutely do not advocate everyone go to Vista by any stretch of the imagination.
I will say what the advantages are of it over XP and other prior OS's, etc. There are clearly good reasons to upgrade that I think everyone can benefit from, namely the security features in it.
However, I would never tell someone to upgrade their current machine without knowing their system specs, recommending that they run the upgrade advisor, etc.
People are mistaking my advocacy of Vista as I think Vista is for everyone right now, there's no bugs or problems with Vista, etc. That is not what I'm doing.
What has bothered me on this forum are things being said about Microsoft and Vista that are flat out not true, or at the very least, can't be proven. I've seen numerous times people have criticized things in Vista such as UAC without a shred of understanding how it works, why it's there, how to use it effectively, etc. I've seen lies about something being a bug when it's not, what the minimum system requirements are, driver incompatibility with certain printers, a Microsoft conspiracy with hardware vendors to not release drivers for older hardware, etc.
"1. I still like WinXP very much.
2. I tried it and didn't like it. (I do know, that for my own good, I should accept it as it will protect me from myself. However, after 9 years of having a computer in my home I only got my homepage hijacked once and nothing more from the evil side.)"
You can run what you wish, and I'll just make a few comments about what you said here.
- XP is a good OS, too. Do I think Vista is better? Yes. It is coded better, with security in the minds of the developers from the ground up, with the coders now with years of experience coding with security in mind. Remember, XP was not particularly secure until SP2. While it was important to Microsoft to make a secure OS, they didn't particularly execute it that well until then. People may say, "that's why you should wait until SP2 is released for Vista". However, that ignores that programmers learn from their mistakes.
- I'm not just saying it's more secure because I have a blind faith in Microsoft to do that. I have read the OS architecture at a very detailed level. I understand what they've done, why they've done it, and how that enhances security. Vista is substantially more secure than XP SP2. I won't go into gory details here why it is. If you'd like, I'll post another thread pointing out all that they've done that I think are important.
- I am a network engineer and a security expert for securing all the way up to enterprise sized networks on Windows platforms from servers to desktops, and overall security with firewalls such as PIX. I know very well how computers are compromised, and what can be done to prevent it, and what the rising threats are and trends for the future. You mentioned you've only been hijacked once.
How do you know you haven't been hacked other than that?
My brother did everything in basic principles of security right in XP he could, the big he didn't do was not run with admin credentials because it sucks to do that in XP. Completely understandable why he just couldn't do that. Did have an updated AV always running, didn't intentionally surf questionable sites, didn't install weird programs, ran several anti-malware scanners like Ad-aware, deleted emails he didn't know who the senders were before opening them, etc.
Several months ago he had his credit card number stolen, and he assumed it was done by a waitress at a restaurant. A few months after that, I was at his house, happened to run msconfig, and saw he had a keystroke logger installed after happening to notice a suspicious exe on the startup list.
As good as I am, I would never assume I'd never get hacked. We all benefit from better security built into our OS.
Edit: I also meant to mention that the growing threats to computer security in general is not worms that propagate by connecting to network services. They are application level attacks, like infected file attachments in email, malicious content embedded within web pages, malformed files accessed through a browser or mail client like PDF and Office documents, etc.
These are things that bypass typically software and hardware firewalls due to their nature. We've been running AV for decades, and they've proven to not be completely effective against these attacks.
One of the best things you can do to protect yourself from this is don't run with admin creds when you launch these programs that don't need it, and UAC if used properly helps tremendously in this regard.
"I think you simply need to be a little patience for the masses to get to like Vista regardless of how long it takes MS to work out the complaints."
I understand complaints when you have hardware that doesn't have drivers for it in Vista. However, blaming Microsoft is not right for that.
When people complain about UAC being condescending, ("I CLICKED THE ICON TO START THE PROGRAM, WHY DOES IT ASK ME TO CONTINUE?!) they fundamentally don't understand what UAC is for, why it's there, and how well it is actually designed. They often encounter issues that could be easily solved using UAC effectively; instead, they turn it off, or revert to XP, and recommend to everyone else to do the same thing. People don't like it often because they're not used to it, just like how they used to not like to wear seat belts when they were new, or having to get used to port forwarding issues when they get a router for security.
I'm sorry, I have no sympathy for people who complain about UAC for that reason. If it truly breaks an application, so be it, learn how to work around it if you can, and I even understand disabling it when nothing else works. If you truly did everything you could, and had to revert to XP, fine, too. I have no problem with that, but that's not what I've seen here in most cases.
"On this note; can you tell me why you like Vista so much?"
If you do want to say I'm a staunch advocate for something, it is better computer security. If you haven't noticed by now, I sincerely applaud Microsoft for improving many of the fundamental problems with security in XP when coding Vista. Those are namely:
*Browser security by virtualizing IE in protected mode
*Making it practical to run as a limited user unless absolutely needed
No, I don't think this will prevent every attack, but both are substantial gains in security. They've done quite a bit with other things, too.
"Do you have an ulterior motive that you would like to share so we may better understand where you are coming from?"
None, aside from fairness to Microsoft and Vista. IMO, on the fundamental big issues with security, and I think security is very important, Microsoft has done an outstanding job, as they have on most other things.
You would never get that impression on this forum.
"Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion!
Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution!
The ripple effect is too good not to mention.
If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"
