Microsoft’s Windows Vista has enough changes in the way it operates compared to Windows XP to make some pre-Vista release applications cease to work properly. Perhaps the most dramatic differences come in the realm of the basic anti-virus software. This PR release came across my desk today and I thought I’d pass it on:

Milburn, NJ – February 12th 2007 – GRISOFT, developer of AVG security software, announces that AVG Anti-Virus has received Virus Bulletin’s VB100 award for tests completed on Microsoft Windows Vista. This award states that AVG had found and removed all presented viruses considered to be “in the wild” and is therefore ready to protect users of the new operating system by Microsoft. Quality of AVG Anti-Virus for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista is also approved by ICSA Labs, which certified AVG Anti-Virus on the Vista platform recently.

“The close cooperation with Microsoft in developing security tools for beta versions of Windows Vista and the preparation for the Vista launch was a great experience for us,” said Larry Bridwell of GRISOFT, vice president of Global Security Strategies. “We can now with full confidence say that users of our security products are prepared to face a broad range of Internet threats even when upgrading to Windows Vista.”

I use the free version of AVG, GRISOFT’s anti-virus software, and have been quite pleased with its performance under the Vista operating system. You could go for the other anti-virus products out there, including Microsoft’s own One Care, but the price for personal use is just hard to beat.