Antivirus not in Vista
According to The Register, Microsoft will “omit” antivirus services for Windows Vista when it ships. Strange, because you would think that one of the main reasons for upgrading to Vista is security… Why would you pay extra for Windows antivirus?
Microsoft currently has their own antivirus program in beta testing under Windows OneCare, but it’s made specifically for Windows XP Service Pack 2 users. Sidebar Geek thinks Microsoft should simply drop Windows OneCare. Get rid of it and port it over to Windows Defender. Users should be able to run Windows Defender on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, and to pick and choose services via Defender in the way of modules.
That really surprised me about the release. Given the increase in security and safety they discussed I expected to see the new and improved firewall, Microsoft Defender, Anti-Spyware and anti-virus all rolled up. I would have thought that it would all fit in perfectly with Windows Update and Microsoft Update functionality.
May be that some states or contries would not allow this type of bundling. Remember what happened with the bundling of IE and other products?
I think that the decision not to include an anti virus utility is a simple recognition of the market, which is why the announcement was dropped in Computer Reseller news ( http://www.crn.com/sections/custom/custom.jhtml;jsessionid=MCX3J53IO3DE4QSNDBECKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleId=177104675&pgno=2 ). And if you really think about it, most business users have virus protection, and it’s malware that presents the big problem for home users. The changes Microsoft is making (making it difficult to log in as administrator, including Defender) are probably enough. Congrats on picking up a good piece of news in a timely manner. I’ve got your RSS feed in my Google desktop, and always glance at your latest posts.