Keeping Vista Secure

The holiday shopping season has come and gone. Frankly, given the state of the economy I expected to see better deals. I checked every week since Halloween to see when retailers would let the bottom drop out and start selling nicely equipped laptops for $300 or so. It just never happened that I saw. It seems like $400 or $500 was still the baseline, and that 160Gb drives and 1Gb or 2Gb of RAM were still the norm. I could get that in July. If you aren't going to drop the price, at least give me a 320Gb drive and 4Gb of RAM and a built-in webcam for my $500. Where were the holiday bargains??

I may not have found the deals I was looking for, but that didn't stop millions of people from buying new desktop or laptop systems over the holidays. There is a virtual guarantee (we'll call it a 99% chance) that those systems came pre-loaded with some version of Windows Vista. Take a deep breath. Don't panic. Windows Vista - especially Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (and SP2 in Beta now and coming soon) - is not as bad as you have been led to believe. In my opinion, the pros outweigh the cons and the cons have been greatly exaggerated.

So, now you have a Windows Vista system. Now what? Well, you can check out the resources I have created such as how to backup and restore data in Vista, or how to use the Parental Controls in Windows Vista. You can read books like Windows Vista Security to learn the nitty gritty details of securing Windows Vista. I also recommend that you check out this article from PC World magazine titled Secure Your Vista PC in 10 Easy Steps. Enjoy your Vista system and visit here often to learn more. Feel free to comment here or drop me an email if you have specific questions or concerns.