The word according to PC Tools.

Yes, you read it right. It looks like Vista is more susceptible to malware than it’s younger version, Windows 2000.  Not good news for Microsoft.

Using ThreatFire security service, PC Tools found that Vista lets through 639 threats per 1,000 compared to 586 for Windows 2000. Windows 2003 comes in even lower with 487 but XP does not fair well: 1,021 - I’m not sure how that works based on a figure of 1,000 analysed threats! Working on those figures, 64% of the Vista installation base is infected and 100% of XP - can’t be right, I’m clean (I think).

Microsoft bites back.

What else would you expect? According to a spokesman from MS, statistics from the Malicious Software Removal Tool show the figures to be far lower - but didn’t give any figures. MSRT ran on around 400 million Windows machines in November 2007 and, apparently, the figures returned do not show the same level of vulnerabilities found by PC Tools.

Just to be safe, I’m going to fire up my Ubuntu laptop.

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