Antivirus Testing for Windows 7

We've gotten a few requests in Ye Olde Mailbag recently asking if we're planning Windows 7 antivirus reviews anytime soon.

That depends on what you consider "soon," frankly. ;-)

With the fairly recent public release of Windows 7 beta (for free, no less!), clearly the initial reviews of the OS are good, and it's clear even though it's officially labeled a "beta" product, it's very, very good.

The general consensus is that's it's everything Vista should have been.

Given the loud backlash against Microsoft for Vista, I'm glad Windows 7 is starting with such good reviews.

Do You Need Antivirus with Windows 7

With Vista's release, Jim Allchin, Microsoft's former President was quoted at betanews.com as saying,

"My son, seven years old, runs Windows Vista, and, honestly, he doesn't have an antivirus system on his machine.

"His machine is locked down with parental controls, he can't download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that.

"That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows XP SP2."

That really is quite a statement; however, he also pointed out,

"Please don't misunderstand me: This is an escalating situation.

The hackers are getting smarter, there's more at stake, and so there's just no way for us to say that some perfection has been achieved.

But I can say, knowing what I know now, I feel very confident."

Given that, as company president, it was his job to be tout the features and benefits of his company's products, I'm not surprised by the first statement, per se; however, I do think it was cavalier of him to be dismissive of antivirus software.

Here we are now, a couple of years into Vista, and clearly Vista machines are indeed being infected with viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, and all sorts of other malware (albeit perhaps in different ways that different versions of Windows) so it's pretty clear these things are still a threat to this OS as they are to other OSes.

And, viruses will continue to be a threat to Windows 7, too, no matter how well locked-down a given computer may be.

So What About Windows 7 Antivirus Reviews?!

Ah, yes, back to the original point: when are we going to get antivirus reviews up for Windows 7?

We've got some other things cooking right now with tons of new pages that help our users do a head-to-head antivirus comparison of the different A/V software we've reviewed, but once that's done, Windows 7 antivirus reviews look like they're next on the horizon for us.

The initial expectation is that A/V software that runs well on Vista should also run equally well (and perhaps better) on Windows 7.

If you're technically inclined and are interested, here's where to download Windows 7.