On February 5, 2007, Sunbelt Software released CounterSpy version 2, the latest version of their award-winning CounterSpy anti-spyware / anti-adware program. Once piece of great news — CounterSpy v2 works with Windows Vista, in addition to Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional.

I’d been waiting on the new version to upgrade. I had decided that I didn’t want to run the beta version on my notebook, so I just waited… and I’m happy with the finished product.

First, one of the issues that Sunbelt was targeting with CounterSpy 2 was to reduce the memory requirements of CounterSpy. I see the difference, too. Version 1.5 could take drastically different amounts of memory — I saw a low of 22MB to a high of almost 200MB. I suspect that CounterSpy had its spyware/adware signatures both significantly compressed and encrypted on the hard drive.

However, to try to speed up the constant processing, I also suspect that it had uncompressed the signatures in memory for faster checking. They were probably still encrypted so that other antispyware applications and antivirus applications

All this is simply my speculation of how it could have used that much memory.

Version 2, though, seems much more efficient. A quick Control-Alt-Delete pulls up the Windows Task Manager so I can click on the Processes tab. I see two files, SBCSSvc.exe and SBCSTray.exe.

Read more in CounterSpy 2.0 Released – First Look or download the free full-function 15-day CounterSpy v2 trial now.

DesktopLinux.com has a great multi-part article where the author is installing Vista and Linux on the same computer for a showdown.

A Vista vs. Linux Matchup describes the installation, issues and compares Vista Ultimate and SimplyMepis 6.1, which is based on Ubuntu Linux.

So far, the articles in the series are “Part 1: Leveling the Playing Field, ” “Part 2: Dual-booting Vista and Linux” and “Part 3: Hardware Wars.” The series has more to go…

Reuters reported today that Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said on Tuesday the company’s Windows Vista operating system had been incredibly well received.

This is strangely at odds with some of the other articles that I’ve read recently.

Companies like Dell are pushing Vista on many of their popular models. Retail stores with the usual set of prebuilt systems are all pushing Vista. Why not? It’s the first new Microsoft operating system in 5 years! For most people, new OS means New Computer! Yippee!

I ran across a great, positive review of Windows Ultimate.

Steven Cooper at MBReview.com wrote Vista Ultimate First Thought This is a very positive review, but I get the feeling that the author was attempting to be “fair.”

Microsoft released updates yesterday that included a security fix to prevent attackers gaining control over your Vista computer. Read more in my article Windows Security Updates Fix Vista Issue, too