Recently overheard in the hallways of Lavasoft...

One of our research analysts has had Microsoft Vista on her home machine since June when they purchased their new laptop. Yesterday, for the very first time, an alert message from the built-in anti-spyware freebie program, Windows Defender, popped up saying that it detected a threat for a file that was being downloaded to the machine. Yes, that's right, this researcher was indeed downloading a suspicious file to her machine. Keep in mind - one alert message since June!

What you need to know is that this particular researcher downloads multiple malware/suspicious files each and every day.

That does not say much about the Windows Defender program, and only serves as a reminder why 3rd party anti-spyware companies are a must in this industry.