Finally, I have fully moved to using windows vista from xp for... everything.. from development, to blogging at home, to browsing the internet... and I am happy I made this shift soo much later after vista arrived (what a couple of YEARS back already!!).
The shift to vista, more than anything else, becomes more safer an OS for me to rely on these days, after going through all kinds of childish viruses.. if they were intelligent viruses atleast i would have had nice time trying to find a fix.. but these childish viruses would come in through a weakness of firefox or internet explorer, write some dlls on my laptop, overwrite explorer.exe to create those dlls everytime explorer.exe did anything.. and what for all this.. just to make more channels open, close firewall blocks, disable antivirus .. to just have fun having taken over some space on my laptop..
other than that the writers of those viruses achieved nothing.. typically nothing.. i didnt lose any files, i could even work normal offline, and only when i connected to internet they used my internet bandwidth to spread making my laptop a host.. again all that for nothing, but just to go to another system or a usb key, or a cd written.. on my system. Children who learn software try all this, trying to disable something and say 'wow my code shutdown the computer' like stuff when they learn new programming areas.. and get happy about the *achievement*.
so, with vista's security features, which is like even if you open a program on your laptop, vista will ask did u try to open this to verify security.. the childish safety issues which eat up a looot of productive time is now secured.. but only for now.. i think with simple modifications in the code of those children.. even the 'did you want to run this program' request could be avoided or already answered programmatically.. and the children will be back.
anyways.. giving me back my productive time... and for sometime allowing me to not bother about the best way to block children viruses.. which is installing a personal firewall managed by me with a password on my laptop.. and allowing or blocking each and every port and request on the computer .. this would be pain to do.. so i am happy that i don't have to do this for sometime.
also, i think Microsoft is fully focussing on supporting vista and malware affecting vista or program updates and security updates for vista.. so much that .. I really see a lot of windows update items available every now and then when my laptop automatically checks, which is far more than what windows update items or frequency of updates are available for windows xp off late..
Vista, in the US costs close to 50$ if I am right.. and with a decent firewall + antivirus like AVG/ mcAfee internet suites.. for a few extra bucks.. should be all that is neccessary for a pain-free internet access laptop.
Why a firewall.. windows firewall is easy to hack.. Microsoft has clear specs and allows programmatic control of windos firewall which a hacking program can easily manage without your knowledge.
Though those 'Do you want to run this program', 'Did you try to open network properties, if yes, press continue' are frustrating.. I think this is going to be the order of the day hereafter on windows OSes, and that should be good news for MAC-OS or linux based systems which are at present less vulnerable to viruses or hacking..
