This post was published 2 years 11 months 28 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.

Has Microsoft been drinking too much of their KoolAid? Jim Allchin of Microsoft, seems to believe that.

Allchin’s statement came in response to a question about his relative level of confidence that Vista would be more secure than Windows XP SP2. In response, he noted there were key security features added to Vista which could not be added to Windows XP SP2 even though, he said, his people apparently tried to do so.

Two such features — namely Vista’s new parental controls, and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), which renders the object code of the system kernel in memory differently each time to thwart the designs of malicious code — render his son’s Vista machine comfortable enough for him to use, even though production-quality anti-virus software for the unit has yet to be completed.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Remember this comes from the person who spent two days with Steve Balmer trying, unsuccessfully, to remove spyware from a Windows box.