Microsoft Vista firewall comes under scruitiny

THERE ARE MANY unhappy people in the industry right now. Unhappy engineers that work in R&D departments of various network solution companies. Why? Well, "rushing out the door" why. That sort of "why".

While software vendors are worried that Windows Vista will blow everybody away with its security features, paid version of AntiSpyware and AntiVirus software and the like, the truth is that all of those features will be slow as a dog, since Microsoft decided to do network and network security paying little attention to the hardware that features those security technologies.

Most notably, Intel Bensley and Nvidia Nforce boards feature advanced features in the TCP/IP world, most notably TCP/IP offload engines. The tech that advanced network companies deploy lowers the CPU usage by a factor of about 30%, sometimes even 40% less CPU utilization…). Of course, without support for the Offload Engine, CPU power consumption stays at very high levels and there you have it - you have to pay for both the software and services that will actually raise your power bill, since the CPU won't be able to save power by decreasing the clock speed such as Cool'n'Quiet, and SpeedStep.

Of course, there is an answer. Open a search for third party firewalls that support the advanced network features and you can keep the castrated Vista firewall just about where it belongs. In "off" mode.

Symantec said it wants to beat Microsoft on security technology Well, there is a pretty simple way. Just check what is hidden inside network adaptors and use those transistors. µ