Slashdot Log In
Windows Chief Suggests Vista Won't Need Antivirus
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:52 PM
from the steadfastly-bulletproof dept.
from the steadfastly-bulletproof dept.
LadyDarth writes "During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed."
Related Stories
[+]
Technology: Windows Vista Released To Manufacturing 172 comments
Many readers wrote in to make sure we know that Microsoft execs have signed off on the code and Windows Vista has been and released to manufacturing. As APC put it, "It's good to go — or as good as it is going to be until the first round of patching begins." CNN has a good roundup of Vista's long development history.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
If users can... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because a virus cannot harm the operating system does not mean it is harmless.
Also reported: (Score:5, Funny)
Hindsight being 20/20... (Score:5, Funny)
no antivirus? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used XP SP2 without AV for years (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I'm using IE7 as my main browser (quiet!) and don't anticipate any problems with it, either. Heck, its *more* paranoid than FF is some of the time (it will quibble about http refresh redirects to executables, for example).
i have to concur (Score:5, Funny)
LIghtening fast (Score:5, Funny)
I remember.... (Score:5, Interesting)
(still have no use for XP, btw.)
Jeez.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of what they said about Win95. (Score:5, Funny)
Titanic (Score:5, Funny)
My first thought was... (Score:5, Insightful)
all a ploy to make more $ (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant marketing $cheme
@LiquidCoooled, about zombies (Score:5, Interesting)
vuja de (Score:5, Informative)
No system is immune to viruses. All it takes is a stupid user to allow it, and we all know there's no shortage of that. That's why antivirus products exist for every major OS out there. Even Linux has antivirus apps (though granted, most of them are geared towards Linux boxen running as servers for Windows-based networks).
Oh wait. Technically, if it requires a stupid user's interaction to get in, it's not a virus. It's a trojan. I guess Vista really could be immune to viruses....
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait until he gets older... (Score:5, Funny)
re: Hmm, and where have we heard this before (Score:5, Funny)
Yea..........and 640K will be plenty of memory..........
And the world will only need 4 computers...................
And no one would ever need a computer at home..............
Sheesh......where do they come up with this stuff?
A new one:
We will never have more than 16777215 comments.............
Well gosh... (Score:5, Insightful)
NATIVE ANTIVIRUS
Seriously, isn't this what third party antivirus vendors have been whining about?
Okay... so perhaps it isn't that crazy... (Score:5, Informative)
And XP has no buffer overflows... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has said it has stamped out buffer overflows with the upcoming release of Windows XP. Jim Allchin, vice president, claimed the company has done a complete code review of its operating system and removed all buffers which could overflow. [vnunet.com]
I'll let somebody else post a list of all the critical updates caused by buffer overflows...
What else is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had two infections on my Windows over the years--Nimda and a video codec trojan. I'm not counting the second boxes that I used to use for experiments--I never put anything important on them, so I tended to just not care, and blow away Windows when they got nasty--that was back in the bad old dialup days when potential damage to others was minimal, and Windows was a lot less secure. I don't know if AV would have stopped Nimda, because I didn't use AV back then. AV didn't stop the trojan. I used to disable AV routinely because it *is* a virus. It used to slow boxes down way too much, and cause all kinds of problems with installers. I always un-do the stupid defaults in Windows and IE, and I try not to be too careless. Nimda is really the only one I can blame on MS, and it was patched ages ago. I would probably disable AV on my current box, but they seem to have gotten better about not hogging resources and/or crashing the box so I just leave it alone.
I wonder if Vista is finally going to display extensions by default. That was always irritating. It would be *nice* if you had to enable active content on a per-site basis by default. It would be better if they just didn't have so much active content out there. Would I "just trust" a Vista box? No way. But would I run it without AV if there was none pre-installed? Yes, in a heartbeat--but I would still be very careful about how I conducted myself on the web, and I would still want to go through all the settings to make sure there was nothing stupid in there. And I would *still* be checking up on processes and registry keys from time-to-time.
But anyway, XP without AV is not a big deal--if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately, that's a big if. Nevermind 7 year olds. It's the 57 year olds that you have to worry about.
What he meant: (Score:5, Funny)
It's not the viruses you need to worry about... (Score:5, Insightful)
The main attack vectors these days seem to center on "drive by downloads" or pop ups that trick you into downloading executables ("WARNING! Your PC is infested with SPYWARE - CLICK HERE to remove"). Most Antivirus software is unbelievably pathetic when it comes to identifying/dealing with spyware. I've seen dozens of clients who have so much spyware, it can take 30 minutes or more to boot up and then spend more time closing all the popped-up windows. FF and it appears IE7 as well will hopefully go a long way to closing this attack. Now we just need to wait for everyone with win95,98,ME, NT, etc. to upgrade.
This is exactly why.... (Score:5, Funny)