8 reasons why you should use anti-virus software with Windows 7

Whenever a new version of Windows comes out, I usually avoid buying from that first batch, since there always seems to be glitches to work out.  It appears that Windows 7 is no exception since it was shown to be vulnerable to 8 of the 10 “freshest” viruses circulating around the internet.

SophosLabs used a copy of Windows 7 on a clean machine that was configured to follow system defaults without loading any anti-virus software.  Of the 10 viruses that they introduced to the machine, 2 would not operate correctly under the newest version of Windows. So that leaves 8 that you need to protect against.

Their article basically reinforced the warning that, even though many are heralding Windows 7 as being better than Vista, it doesn’t mean that you can throw caution to the wind and don’t need anti-virus software. 

But this research raises the question: should Windows 7 be able to protect you from the newest viruses fresh out of the box?

I recently wrote an article about the available patches for Windows 7 which could be helpful if you’ve recently updated your software.

image:Microsoft