In defence of Vista

[sjaak327]

"It's certainly a security risk to give highly inexperienced people administrator rights but that has got nothing to do with real OS security. It's certainly dead easy to bring down any OS in existence if you have sufficient rights, and it always will be."


Yes, however the difference is that under Vista, you can run as admin (still the default, actually still the default on 7 as well), and still be much more secure, courtesy of UAC and file and registry virtualisation.

It does make a striking difference. People who disable it because it's annoying, are for a big deal, taking that advantage away.

I am truly interested in know what you consider a more insecure OS developed by Microsoft, that has an equal high number of vulnerabilities and succeeded attacks in the same amount of time. Along the lifecycle of NT, surely XP must be it.

 

[nolabar10der]

Vista will always receive better marks from the geekier among us than in the 'general public.' Just look at the two most guilty reasons for Vista hate:

Drivers. For reasons I will never understand, many people assume that a camera or a printer should work through magic and unicorns living in a USB port. When it doesn't, guess who takes the blame? The manufacturer for not providing a Vista driver (often intentionally)? Yeah, right. The user, for not so much as bothering to look around for one? Nope. The clear culprit here is Vista, despite everyone in the developed world having known that it was coming out, and maybe you guys should have made sure that your products were supported.

The second and probably biggest culprit for the hate IS Microsoft's fault. Minimum requirements. Sure, Vista would run on 512 RAM, just as I could technically function on a bag of Skittles for the weekend. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people purchased Celeron laptops or desks with a half-gig of memory and then had the audacity to say that Vista sucked, without considering so much as a $30 stick of RAM. Again, this is directly tied to MS, and of course, the manufacturers who knew better but didn't see fit to bump their specs just a tad, if only to give even budget consumers a decent experience with their product. Lol, yeah that was gonna happen.

And since we're here, a third big reason exists: Just bad PR. How many people have you met that claim, "Dude, Vista sucks," yet have never actually used it? I'm not in IT, hell, I don't even work in a Best Buy - and I've met tens of these people. "Well, have you tried it?"

"No."
"Would you like to?"
"Well, sure, I guess, but it sucks?"

...sigh

 

[Jon55]

Well, I was well into my studies to get a computer engineering degree when MSDOS 4 came out (and a computer enthusiast since the ZX Spectrum days) and I can tell you that your statements are grossly inaccurate.


XP the most insecure OS ever developed by Microsoft? Sure, that's why techies and businesses alike are still refusing to "upgrade" although practically forced at gun point by now. The fact is that XP is the longest used OS version in the history of OS versions. Sure this means it still has fixes coming out but that's only because it is still being used, a lot. 100% bug free softwareis so legendary a tool as the philosopher's stone.


Windows 95 based on MS-DOS? That's something not even worth arguing. But what makes only an OS based on NT.. an OS (which we can then consider to be insecure), in any case?

XP is a dinosaur of an OS. It was great in its day, sure, but its day is LONG gone. Anyone claiming it's faster or more stable than Vista/7 is kidding themselves.

 

[FXDriverGuy]

I'll just use a Wikipedia quote

"Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on 30 June 2004 and Windows NT 4.0 Server on 31 December 2004, due to major security flaws including MS03-010, which according to Microsoft could not be patched without significant changes to the core operating system. "

This discussion, although Antman really spiced it up, has no real point. So I'll just say that all my techie friends dual-boot XP and a Linux flavor and won't touch Vista with a stick, and leave it at that. And yes it's still anecdotal evidence but I do have many techie friends

 

[FXDriverGuy]

its day is LONG gone.

As a final note, some w3schools OS statistics for June 2009

WinXP: 66,9%, Vista: 18.3% (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp)

Note that Windows 7 already had by June a market share similar to the first few months of Vista on the shelves.

 

[sjaak327]

Yeah they might be technie friends, but I doubt they know anything about security. Your first quote, regarding NT, please show me what major attack brought down NT 4.0 in drones, in the same was as attacks in 2001, 2002 did to XP ?

Nt 4.0 released in 1996 was simply end of support.

 

[Antman]

That's a spicy meatball.

XP is a dinosaur of an OS. It was great in its day, sure, but its day is LONG gone. Anyone claiming it's faster or more stable than Vista/7 is kidding themselves.

Neither you, nor our drink slingin' friend from "N'awlins" truly understands the customer base or the MS business model, at least your comments reflect this. One article from millions that may shed some light on this.

With the possible exception of Windows ME, MS has never released an OS product with the residential/casual user/gamer et al as the target market. That demographic set has been pulled along in the wake, rolled up in the tide. Regardless of packaging labels or version names, every version of DOS and Windows, OS/2 and even Xenix was intended for business consumption - with or without a domain server.

And business stays with what works well enough. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

 

[matt_0978]

In defense of Vista... Oops, I missed my block.

I just see this from a business man's perspective. As an OS, Vista is what Vista is. As a product offering, Vista was not unlike New Coke.

My Vista DVD set is the most expensive item I never used. Unless you consider the '93 RX-7 I bought for Cailin, a month before she dumped me.

i bought an 80gb ps3 thinking it would play ps2 games, that was a waste of £250 bucks.

btw antman, i'm curious:

f∆=∑∆ + (c-1)​

wossat all about? just gibberish?​

 

[Antman]

btw antman, i'm curious:

f∆=∑∆ + (c-1)​

wossat all about? just gibberish?​

Thank you for finding my typo. It should read f∆=∑∆ - (c+1) I corrected it.

I can't place the actual formula because the equation images are not supported in that placeholder.

Basically, the function of change is the summation of change, not including my experience. I am the collapse of the wave function.

i=am squared (i=am2, no superscript available) is a reference to Jaynesian bicameral theory.

 

[mez4junk]

Vista was a bloated, resource-hog piece of crap.

 

[sjaak327]

As a final note, some w3schools OS statistics for June 2009

WinXP: 66,9%, Vista: 18.3% (OS Statistics)

Note that Windows 7 already had by June a market share similar to the first few months of Vista on the shelves.

Nobody denies the market share of XP, I wonder why you included Windows 7 marketshare comparison as opposed to Vista. At the end of the day, Windows 7 is a better Vista, no doubt about it. It is however only marginally better then Vista. It is for a very large part similar to Vista. According to Microsoft's own admission, no large changes have been made to the internals of the OS, as the number one priority and hence adagium from Microsoft states that if it runs on Vista, it will run on Windows 7.

Saying Vista sucks and then praising Windows 7 does not stop to amaze me. (not saying you in particular are doing that by the way, but some people surely do).

 

[FXDriverGuy]

Yeah they might be technie friends, but I doubt they know anything about security. Your first quote, regarding NT, please show me what major attack brought down NT 4.0 in drones, in the same was as attacks in 2001, 2002 did to XP ?

Nt 4.0 released in 1996 was simply end of support.

God, people can you please stop making statements that have nothing to do with reality? "XP" "attacks", such as W32.Blaster more infamously, affected almost always XP and 2000 and NT. Although, using the same example, most Blaster variants didn't bother with coding anything for NT, just as nobody bothers with exploiting vulnerabilities in OSes not many people use.

 

[sjaak327]

The fact that in XP a lot of code was added to "merge" the old Windows 3, 95, 98 and me line, makes XP by definition more vulnerable then Windows 2000 and NT.

Good example is the recent flaw in activeX, that does not affect windows 2000. It does effect Windows Xp and Server 2003 only.

 

[FXDriverGuy]

NT was full of huge bugs that didn't become apparent until the days of 2000 and XP, when people actually started using the OS. And anyone will tell you that the kernel was pretty monolithic back then, which made patching exploits very difficult if not impossible. And that's actually the reason MS stopped supporting NT, as officially announced, whether you believe it or not.

When 2000 came out word on the street was that it had thousands of known flaws and leaked documents confirmed that. And it had so many flaws because the merging of 95/98 features which you say happened with XP actually happened in 2000. And XP was delayed and Me was brought out to replace it on home desktops because that merge didn't go well.

XP was introduced in August 2001 and its SP2 came out 3 years later. Vista came out at the end of 2006, after an extensive public beta testing. Its second service pack is already out.

I'm not even going to mention which of Microsoft's NT-based OSes has been the fastest so far. There are countless benchmarks all over the net for anyone still in doubt.

I didn't see the many examples I was expecting, of XP attacks in 2001 and 2002 which didn't affect 2000 and NT at all. As for the "ActiveX vulnerability" it's actually a bug in the ATL which affects much more than a video control in XP and 2003. That's why MS hasn't "fixed" it for a year. Poke around you'll eventually find out about it.

All in all, as I said from the very start, XP delivered and kept on delivering. Any OS used so much for so much time will be attacked and then attacked some more. But it is used so much and for so much time for a reason. Hopefully 7 will be able to replace it on most people's desktops and even more hopefully I won't have to go through anyone else's "facts".

 

[sjaak327]

"I didn't see the many examples I was expecting, of XP attacks in 2001 and 2002 which didn't affect 2000 and NT at all. As for the "ActiveX vulnerability" it's actually a bug in the ATL which affects much more than a video control in XP and 2003. That's why MS hasn't "fixed" it for a year. Poke around you'll eventually find out about it."

Right, so how does that make XP any safer ? Answer it doesn't. My remark about XP being the most insecure OS ever developed by Microsoft still stands. You could indeed argue that NT carries the same flaws, but by that same argurment, you cannot say that it is therefore more insecure then XP, something you do seem to imply by linking that vulnerablity that made MS give up on NT, a vulnerability that also applied to Windows 2000 and XP. I do agree that XP was and is used much more then NT and 2000, and indeed that also make the chance of exploiting vulnerabiltiies much more likely. The problem with XP prior to SP2 was that nothing really had been done to address the inherit security flaws within the NT system. SP2 did improve it a bit, but nowhere near enough.

At the end of the day, it is clear to anyone that Vista delivers the security, that XP, to this day doens't deliver. And you only need to go out in the workspace and manage corporate networks and see the mess that a simple email attachment can do to XP, as opposed to vista, and that was the whole point of my remark in the first place.

 

[FXDriverGuy]

Is there something you don't want to understand, maybe? XP was definitely more secure than NT and 2000 when it came out, many things needed fixing and were fixed along the way. And the fact is that Vista is already more patched than XP was at the same point in time. And the "ActiveX" bug certainly affects Vista code, MS won't announce the actual bug before it's completely fixed. And I can't really see how UAC helped corporate networks, unless they were giving all of their users admin rights in the first place. And I'm really, really done with this thread.

 

[sjaak327]

" And I can't really see how UAC helped corporate networks, unless they were giving all of their users admin rights in the first place."

Many do on XP ,as it is a disaster to run without it in many cases. Welcome to the corporate world.

Another reason why Vista is so much better as opposed to XP, you actually can run as admin on Vista and still be safe.