It has been one year and nearly five months since Vista was launched in late January 2007. I hope everyone now agrees that this is the right time to fire the person in charge of marketing at Microsoft. I’m not sure who this person is, but I do know they haven’t given the public one reason to buy Vista. I remember when Windows XP came out we got some great commercials with kids flying all over the place to a Madonna track, while showcasing all of the new cool media upgrades Windows XP had to offer. This was at a time when people were just starting to get into digital media, this was a real reason to upgrade. When Server 2003 came out there was a really great commercial with a guy telling everyone in the office he had saved a nickel on every transaction, and they were doing a million transactions a day. Now saving $50,000 a day is a real reason to upgrade. Where did the great Microsoft commercials go? All I see on TV now is a guy pretending to be a PC while he makes a fool of himself in front of a guy named “MAC”. While I will concede these commercials are very funny, they don’t exactly instill confidence in the consumer that upgrading to Vista will be a positive experience. Where is Microsoft’s voice? Why aren’t they trying to create their own buzz about Vista? In fact recently all I have heard from Microsoft is that Windows 7 may be released in 2009. Wow! Talk about killing confidence in your consumer base. The good news is that Microsoft can turn this whole thing around by just telling the consumer why they should upgrade to Vista.
Many of us have heard that Vista does improve security, but is that a real reason to upgrade? Absolutely! Malware is only getting smarter and the security architecture of Windows XP has proved itself inadequate against the biggest outbreaks of the last several years. Windows Vista on the other hand will provide users a new security architecture designed to defend against more mature attacks as viruses and malware become more non-deterministic and metamorphic in nature. This is reason number one why Microsoft developed User Account Control (UAC). UAC prompts users to elevate their security token only when elevated privilege is required. This is a big departure to how security was handled in previous versions of Windows where an administrator had all of their privilege available to them regardless of what they were running. The OS had decided to give you permission to do literally anything in advance without you even asking. I wont even let my kids watch TV without asking. In Vista your privileges are split, you only run a process with elevated privileges when you need them, and even then UAC requires that you at least approve the elevation request. The clear benefit of UAC is that it becomes much more difficult to install and run software that you are not aware is running. If I am a large enterprise and I can improve my security posture just by deploying Vista in its default configuration, to me that would be a reason to upgrade.
Another feature that isn’t getting a lot of press is Internet Explorer’s Protected Mode. Where did the buzz go for this great feature? Internet Explorer’s protected mode will force anything originating from the Internet that is trying to run on your system into an Integrity Level that has less authority than that of a Standard user. Windows Integrity Control, also called “WIC”, allows Vista to assign a mandatory value that indicates how trusted you are on the system, values ranging from: Untrusted, Low, Medium, High, and System. These values do not replace permissions, but rather act as another layer of protection. If a user has administrative rights and all of a sudden becomes compromised by a process originating on the Internet, that process will be automatically be forced into an IL of “Low” and be restricted to only tasks which also have and IL of “Low”. Just about everything in Vista requires at least an IL of “Medium”; a rogue process would be virtually rendered useless. If I am a home user with teenage kids, I want this feature and I want it now.
There is so much more that can be mentioned like the new two way Firewall that is turned on by default? For parents there a new parental controls that let you create white lists defining what your children can and cannot view on the Internet. There is the new Vista kernel which takes giant leaps to all but eliminating Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) because of how Vista limits application kernel hooking. Finally, how about Bitlocker? More and more companies are feeling the heat to protect themselves from data theft. Bitlocker works with the TPM technology that is built into most new laptops and encrypts the system volume to prevent any data theft if a stolen disk is planted into another system. Bitlocker can even leverage companies existing investment in Active Directory to assist with key management.
This article has been all about security and I haven’t even mentioned some of the great other new features that alone could justify the cost of upgrading. Vista enables the Volume Shadow Copy service by default now allowing users to restore files from their desktop with just a right click. How about Complete PC Backup, a bare metal restore technology that that could literally replace expensive 3rd party imaging products. Not to mention the fact if companies want to get the most out of the highly anticipated, and so far well received, Windows 2008 server has to offer.
Maybe the problem is that Microsoft just doesn’t feel security is “Sexy” enough to sell. This may be true, but if Microsoft doesn’t start giving consumers real reasons to upgrade they risk yet another year of letting companies figure out how they can live without Vista.
