Vendor Claims Vista Less Secure Than Windows 2000

The headline seems a little (a little?) sensationalist. In fact, it may be the very definition of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). If I were a vendor of security software or services, I might have something to gain from such a headline. According to a report in InformationWeek, a study by security software vendor PC Tools Software shows that Vista is 5% more likely to allow a threat 'through' than a Windows 2000 system. In the study, performed by collecting data from their behavior-based malware detection service, ThreatFire, Vista was found to be 38% more secure than Windows XP. However, the study reports the number of malware threats that 'got through', and not the number of malware threats that successfully compromised or infected the system. Based on the PC Tools Software results, one would expect to find 64% of all Vista PC's infected with some type of malware, however the data from Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool for the second half of 2007 show that the number is actually less than 3% (compared with 5% for Windows 2000 SP4). Is the study supposed to compel me to want to purchase their ThreatFire service? It seems to me that the results could be interpreted to say that ThreatFire is 61% more likely to let threats get to the Vista operating system, but thankfully only 3% result in a compromise of some sort.