We remain, if you didn’t guess from that opening paragraph, somewhat unimpressed.  Several user comments on another recent Vista article served as reminders that the operating system isn’t at all popular; although businesses are switching to it, the transition may be due to new computers’ packaging as much as anything.

Still, it’s only fair to give Microsoft its say.  Jeff Jones, the security director of Microsoft’s trustworthy Computing group, writes, "My analysis found that researchers found and disclosed significantly fewer vulnerabilities in Windows Vista than either [its] predecessor product, Windows XP, or other operating systems such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and Apple Mac OS X 10.4."

Jones presents a solid 24-page report, and it’s hard (though not impossible) to argue with his results.  Still, with anecdotal evidence of people jumping back to XP, and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency’s recommendation that users never move away from it to begin with, Vista would appear to need work in a lot of other areas.

Meanwhile, reports are coming out that Service Pack 1 could be released before the beginning of April.