Report: Windows 7 almost five times more secure than XP

[DorsetBoy]

Windows 7 is four to five times less vulnerable to malware infections than is Windows XP.

Those are the findings of Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report (PDF), which detailed in depth the state of software vulnerabilities, exploits, security breaches, and malware in 2010.................(more)


Drilling down further, the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista are less infection-prone than are their 32-bit counterparts, which Microsoft attributes to a couple of factors..............(more)

[armadillo]

Correlation is not the same as cause. Reported infection rate per 1000 computers tells us nothing at all about the security of the OS. XP has been around a long time, has a wide user base of non-tech-aware users and has been widely targeted by malware writers. The published conclusion is no more than MS marketing.

[Rik]

I have to agree, sloppy journalism - probably just used the MS press release.

[esh]

I would say it has more security features, and those are certainly more useful. For example, I no longer *have* to turn off Windows Firewall and so on. A lot of people consider OpenBSD the most secure operating system of all, but hardly anyone uses it for a desktop.

Whether it's more secure or not can be argued, but it's certainly a better operating system from a maintenance and operations point of view.