"In a recent interview with Microsoft's COO Kevin Turner, the executive was asked about the future of Windows. In response, Turner had this to say: "Certainly, this last year has been an unprecedented year for Vista and Office and the launch," Turner said. "And we are still committed to the desktop. There will be another release and launch of a Vista-type operating system.

I have been hearing a lot lately about how Windows Vista is supposedly more secure overall than the popular Linux distros in the market today. After soaking this in and having a chance to think about it, I can come to only one conclusion: Microsoft must believe that vulnerabilities are worse than actual, in-motion exploits being used against exiting operating systems.

Almost a year on from the release of Microsoft's Windows Vista, only 13 percent of companies say they expect to move all desktops to the operating system, according to a survey released this week. Furthermore, adoption of Linux continues to gather pace, with a particular emphasis on the desktop emerging.

Not only did Windows Vista - billed by Microsoft as its biggest operating system for 10 years - fail to distinguish Microsoft's latest fiscal year from previous, non-Windows-Vista years, but Microsoft also missed its own expectations by several million dollars.

Last year, curious over the hype that was flooding the internet in the wake of the release of Windows Vista, I decided to turn masochist and inflict a 14-day Vista trial on myself. I found the operating system much worse than even its worst critic.

"If you believe Jeff Jones, Microsoft's security strategy director, then Vista is much more secure than XP, Mac OS X, and Linux."

--- Disclaimer: read the comments at the bottom of the article...

In my last post, I showed how the vulnerability counts for Ubuntu Dapper LTS were lower than Windows Vista. However, I also mentioned that this should be used only to counter Microsoft FUD, and not as a measure of security. What, then, shows that Linux is actually more secure than Windows.

Windows Vista was hit by significantly fewer publicly disclosed security flaws in its first year than Windows XP and open source rivals in their first years, according to a report from Microsoft.