Microsoft Vista shuts out other OSes

WHEN MICROSOFT'S Vista arrives on machines, it looks like it may need a trusted platform model (TPM) chip to be present on the system.

That's just one element of what Microsoft dubs "multi tiered data protection", and the firm says that it will support full volume encryption to prevent disk access to files by other operating systems.

Microsoft is not entirely clear what this implies, however. It says that the entire system partition is encrypted and that includes both the hibernation file and your data as well.

We can see various situations where it might be very useful indeed for another operating system to be able to access files on a hard disk. But the TPM element is possibly more significant. We've already reported that Intel has several of its future motherboards which incorporate the TPM.

Does this Vista implementation mean that the other motherboard manufacturers are going to have to include TPMs on their system boards too? And what implications does it have on the software side? Intel is bundling Wave Systems' Embassy Suite with its future motherboards. Does this mean a bonanza for TPM makers and for Wave as well? µ

L'INQ
Microsoft's Vista reliability page