Vista and Windows 7 more secure than Linux and Mac OS X

Operating system security is always a hotly contended subject, and last week Microsoft amped up the hype by claiming that Windows Vista and the soon-to-be-released 7 is the world’s most secure OS, beating both Linux and Mac OS X.

Here’s what Microsoft’s chief operating officer Kevin Turner had to say at the MidMarket CIO Summit last week:

Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we’ve ever built. It’s also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It’s the safest and most secure OS on the planet today. Everything that we’ve learned in Vista will be leveraged in Windows 7, but certainly when we broke a lot of the compatibility issues to lock down user account controls, to lock down the ability to manipulate states and all the things, that was a very painful process for us to grow through, but we had to do it. And the reason that Windows 7 will be successful is because of the pain we took on Vista. Because from a compatibility standpoint, if it works on Vista, it will work on Windows 7. If it doesn’t work on Vista, it won’t work on Windows 7.

Source: zdnet

View Vista Hidden Files and Folders

By default, Windows “hides” various files and folders that are essential to system operation and data integrity. Why the Big Brother tactic? To protect you from yourself: moving or deleting any of these items could have unwelcome consequences.

Of course, power users sometimes need access to hidden files and folders, like I did the other day when I went searching for an Outlook PST file. In the old XP days, I knew right where to find the setting that would reveal the concealed stuff, but in Vista, the setting for hidden files and folders is hidden itself!

Well, okay, not hidden, just relocated. Here’s how to find it:

1. Open the Control Panel.
ad_icon

2. In the Search field, type folder.

3. You’ll see a section called Folder Options. Under that, click Show hidden files and folders.

4. Find a tick the option marked Show hidden files and folders.

5. Click OK.

That’s all there is to it. A word of caution, though: Leaving this option enabled is not a good idea, even for power users. My recommendation: After you’ve found the hidden files and/or folders you need, head back to Control Panel and re-enable Do not show hidden files and folders.

Source: washingtonpost

Windows 7 “should do a lot better” than Vista

With the positive reaction to the Windows 7 beta coming from various places in the media, many have started to wonder how well Windows 7 will fare once it ships. While it’s still too early to know for sure, certain well-known groups have already made a point to voice their opinion about what will happen next. For example, a while back, I asked Michael Silver, Research VP of Gartner, how he expected to Windows 7 to perform compared to Windows Vista in both the consumer and business markets.

“It should do a lot better,” he told Ars. “Vista has such a bad reputation that it would be hard for Windows 7 not to do better, though Vista’s reputation is a lot worse than the product. Vista adoption is especially low in business—ISVs will eventually look to reduce or drop support for new applications on Windows XP and that will help push organizations to Windows 7 more quickly. Still it will take organizations 12-18 months from the time Windows 7 ships until they are ready to deploy it in large numbers, meaning broad adoption for enterprise begins in 1H11.”

Two weeks ago, Silver released a report titled Windows 7 Won’t Need SP1, but Will Still Need 12 to 18 Months Before Deployment Begins in which he dived deeper into what business users should expect. The most interesting conclusion he came to was “Don’t use SP1 as a milestone to deploy a new version of Windows, but plan to deploy SP1 as part of the initial deployment,” an obvious attempt to destroy the rule of thumb of “wait till SP1 for any new release of Windows.” That would have made Microsoft happy, but Silver still recommends waiting at least a year. Expect Redmond to be giving a completely different recommendation to businesses in the coming months.

Adding Windows 7-Style Icons to Vista

As most Windows watchers know by now, Windows 7 brings a handful of interface tweaks to the table, starting with large, eye-pleasing program icons that take up residence in the taskbar. Of course, this is little more than an update to the Quick Launch feature that debuted in Windows XP. And believe it or not, Vista users can easily bring that Windows 7 look to their own taskbars.

Here’s how:

1. Right-click any open space in the taskbar and clear the checkmark from Lock the Taskbar.

2. Right-click the taskbar again and choose Toolbars, Quick Launch. A small batch of icons appears next to the Start button.

3. Click and drag the Quick Launch toolbar’s right handle to the right to create some extra icon space.

4. Right-click in an open space within that toolbar, then choose View, Large Icons.

Presto! Now your Vista taskbar should look a lot like Windows 7’s. To add icons, just drag and drop any program, folder, or individual file to the Quick Launch toolbar.

I’ll admit I’m not so ga-ga over Windows 7’s interface changes as some folks, but as a longtime Quick Launch fan, I’m definitely liking these larger icons.

Source: washingtonpost

Gamers, enterprises saying yes to Windows Vista

The Internet’s chattering classes may have already given up on Windows Vista, but two key segments of the PC population apparently haven’t.More than a third of online gamers are running Windows Vista, according to a January survey (scroll down to “Windows version”) by online gaming company Valve Corp. That’s almost double the 18% of the nearly 2 million online gamers surveyed by Valve last August.

Meanwhile, almost one third of North American and European corporations have started deploying Vista, according to a report released late last week by Forrester Research.

While Vista has been bashed repeatedly, IT managers are actually “slowly warming” to the operating system two years after its release, wrote analyst Ben Gray.

Nearly 10% of enterprise PCs were running Vista in August and September, when Forrester interviewed 962 IT decision makers at North American and European companies.

Despite “considerable interest in Windows 7,” Gray wrote, Windows Vista is finally shaping out to be the operating system that dethrones Windows XP.”

XP still dominates, with a 71% share, but that is down 16% from its 87% share of corporate desktops in Forrester’s survey results in the three months earlier.

XP is a “lame-duck operating system,” Gray wrote.

Similarly, XP is still run by 65% of players at Steam, an online site for PC gaming that requires users to run Windows 2000, XP or Vista. But 34% were running Vista, which offers more advanced graphics-rendering capabilities desired by gamers.

Those running the 32-bit version of Vista outnumbered users of the more advanced 64-bit flavor by a ratio of three to one — an indicator of how representative of the overall consumer population Steam’s sample is.

Besides the 30% of IT managers who told Forrester last fall they were already deploying Vista, another 27% said they planned to deploy Vista this year or in 2010.

In the Forrester report, Gray did not address the impact of the recent economic downturn and reports late last year that corporations would cut back on their 2009 IT spending plans.

Fifteen percent of respondents told Forrester last fall they planned to skip Vista for Windows 7, with another 28% reporting “no plans” or “don’t know.”

Despite increasing hints that Windows 7 may ship by this Christmas, Gray continues to peg its release for early 2010. As such, he advises companies worried about Microsoft cutting mainstream support for XP after April to upgrade to Vista now.

“Windows 7 will not be dramatically different from Windows Vista since it’s built on the same code base to ensure greater application and hardware compatibility – rather it’s an evolutionary update with more user-facing enhancements,” he wrote. “The bottom line is if you are going to skip Windows Vista on some or all of your PCs, you will need to move very quickly to deploy Windows 7, particularly if you wait until Service Pack 1, as most enterprises do.”

Mac OS X had a 3% share of corporate PCs, while Linux had 2%. Gray expects Apple’s operating system to “maintain its niche business status,” though “progressive organizations are flirting with desktop and application virtualization” to enable Mac usage, “and some are even experimenting with ‘bring your own PC to work’ programs” that also allow Macs, he wrote.

Source: computerworld