Criticism of Windows Vista soon picked up by international media outlets: "Jornal de Notícias", Rádio e Televisão de Portugal, "La Nación", "The Chosun Ilbo", and 163.com. 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.
Windows Vista operates in a protected mode, which operates with lower permissions than the user and runs in isolation from other applications in the operating system, preventing it from accessing or modifying anything besides the Temporary Internet Files directory. Microsoft's anti-spyware product, "Windows Defender", has been incorporated into Windows, providing protection against malware and other threats. Changes to various system configuration settings (such as new auto-starting applications) are blocked unless the user gives consent. Whereas prior releases of Windows supported per-file encryption using Encrypting File System, the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista include BitLocker Drive Encryption, which can protect entire volumes,