Hi Folks,

Glary Utilities v2.3.3

Where Do Trojans Stand?

I recently came across some pretty interesting information and I thought you all should know about it too. This topic was actually posted on WorldStart's message board by user "Harley" and once I saw it, I knew I had to share it with all of you. It has to do with Trojans and where they stand in terms of malware. Please keep reading for all the details. You don't want to miss this!

I might as well just say it. Yep, Trojans were found to make up 75 percent of all the new malware discovered in the third quarter of 2007. Yikes! Trojans have put up some pretty steep numbers in the past, but this is really close to a record high. Why, you ask? Well, this particular type of malware is the perfect tool for hackers who want to gain profit from their attacks. They can set up all kinds of Trojans that con people into giving out their personal information, including credit card numbers, etc. It's sad, but it's true.

Trojans also lead the pack when it comes to the actual number of infections found during the latter part of 2007. They accounted for 32 percent of the malware detected on computers after certain virus scans were done. Adware comes in second with 24 percent, but that's still a pretty big difference. Also, just for some additional information, adware made up 12 percent of new malware found, while worms clocked in at 11 percent. We all know Trojans are dangerous, but if you take care of your computer like you should, you will be just fine. Make sure you run all of your scans on a regular basis, don't open any unusual e-mails and just use some common sense when you're browsing the Web. If you do that, Trojans won't stand a chance against you!

Q:
What's the deal between Windows XP and Vista? Where do they stand in comparison to each other these days? Is one really better than the other? Any information you have would be great!

A:
It's interesting that you ask this, because just last week, I came across an article online that talked all about this. I figured a lot of you would be interested in hearing about it, so when I saw this question in my e-mail, I had to run it right away. I hope this will give you a good idea of what's been going on between Windows XP and Windows Vista in the last few months. Let's check it out!

To begin, basically what I found was some new tests were done on both XP and Vista and they revealed that XP, along with its new Service Pack 3 (beta version), has twice the performance ratings of Vista. And that's even with Vista's beta Service Pack 1 as well. That's pretty intense, isn't it?! Now, the full version of Vista's SP1 is supposed to be released early next year (2008), but the beta version was still tested and it didn't really do much to outshine its predecessor.

So, what exactly did the tests find? Well, for one, Vista, with and without its SP1, performed much slower than Windows XP. It took the Vista operating system 80 seconds to complete the test, while it only took XP 35. Like I said before, Vista was tested both with and without the Service Pack and that brought up some interesting results as well. With the SP1, Vista's performance increased less than two percent and that was rated next to XP's improvement of 10 percent with its SP3. Wow!

Unfortunately, if the Vista SP1 does not improve significantly, that could lead to another huge setback for the Vista operating system. Several businesses and individuals are waiting for the SP1 to be released before they make the switch over to Vista. As of right now, only 13 percent of businesses have already started using Vista and it doesn't look like that number will change much, unless the SP1 makes some big changes. According to Microsoft, the service packs are "still in development" though, so hopefully that will help Vista in the long run. "It has always been our goal to deliver service packs that meet the full spectrum of customer needs," a Microsoft spokesperson said. Let's hope they do!

The article also went over how Microsoft feels about the initial release of Vista, which occurred almost one year ago. According to Microsoft's corporate vice president Mike Sievert, the launch of Vista did not go as well as they thought it would. "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista." And that may be true, but it doesn't seem like Microsoft really did enough to inform the users about the new features and benefits of Vista. Windows Vista comes with a lot of complex features and Microsoft didn't really educate the world about them. NPD analyst Chris Swenson said that Microsoft should have done some more advertising for Vista when it first came out through TV, radio and print ads. The amount of advertising done for Vista rated poorly against what was done for Windows XP.

Maybe we're all just used to XP, but the sales show it's much more popular than Vista as well. During the first six months of retail sales, Vista fell 59.7 percent below what XP sold when it was first released. That's a huge difference! PC manufacturers are also still selling XP computers, because the demand for them is so high. Microsoft set a deadline of January 31, 2008 for all XP sales to end, but they have been forced to extend that until June 2008, because they are still very popular among users. According to Microsoft, 88 million copies of Vista have been sold, but that still doesn't stack up to the numbers XP has brought in.

So, as you can see, Windows Vista is having a hard time getting past the craze of Windows XP, but hopefully with some additional updates and changes, it will be a top notch operating system one day as well. We can only hope!

~ Erin

More Next Friday,
Chuckstr
----My Web Site----

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