Criticism of Windows Vista Criticism of Windows Vista Windows Vista, an operating system released by Microsoft for consumers on January 30, 2007, has been widely criticized by reviewers and users. Due to issues with new security features, performance, driver support and product activation, Windows Vista has been the subject of a number of negative assessments by various groups. For security reasons, 64-bit versions of Windows Vista (and of Windows 7 as well) allow only signed drivers to be installed in kernel mode. Because code executing in kernel mode enjoys wide privileges on the system, the signing requirement aims to ensure that only code with
Windows Vista networking technologies not go into another. This feature however was removed before the release of Windows Vista, and is slated to be included possibly in a future release of Windows. Windows Vista also introduces Network Access Protection (NAP), which makes sure that computers connecting to a network conform to a required level of "system health" as has been set by the administrator of the network. With NAP enabled on a network, when a Windows Vista computer attempts to join a network, it is verified that the computer is up-to-date with security updates, virus signatures and other factors, including configuration of IPsec and