Keep in mind you probably know in the back of your own mind that do to your own due diligence you're not being exposed to threats while using the system though, which does make it seem unnecessary. If however you had different browsing habits, for example, and didn't keep your malware protection up to date, etc, then you might better recognize the importance when it started popping up to block threats you were being exposed to. So for you maybe you should turn it off, but that doesn't mean it's not a very important security feature for others. Besides, if it wasn't there, all the detractors would point to the Mac as having something similar and wonder why Windows doesn't have anything, remember? ;-)
A fully patched, up-to-date Win7 system is about as solid as OS-X, which is a great achievement for Microsoft. A decade too late, but nonetheless a great accomplishment, and much appreciated by those of us who work with and live with Windows every day.
Yes it has definitely taken a long time to secure Windows compared to Mac, but there are several reasons for that - much bigger target, less secure habits of users, many more 3rd party apps and many more features built into the O/S. Once again though it mostly comes down to the habits of the users, and what they download and where they take their browsers. Hit the wrong site and there's almost nothing you can do to protect yourself from being exposed to something damaging, in one way or another.
True enough, that.
> If however you had different browsing habits,...
I've heard estimates that over 80% of porn and other "edgy" sites are infection vectors. Flies to sugar. Or maybe flies to sh*t... :)
> Yes it has definitely taken a long time to secure Windows compared to Mac, but there are several reasons for that - much bigger target, less secure habits of users, many more 3rd party apps and many more features built into the O/S.
And let's not forget that not too many years ago, Microsoft was still adding "cool" features like automatically executing programs that arrive attached to email without "bothering" to notify the user (ah, for the innocence of the old internet!). It takes many years to convince the software guys that they really have to rip that crap out because the bad guys are taking advantage of it.
And there's Marketing's idea of feature sets. Microsoft is heavily invested in its ever-growing features list -- after all that's the only leverage they have to make people pay them more money year after year. Well, that and making new versions of essential applications incompatible with older versions of Windows... (cough) IE9/XP (cough) IE10/Vista (cough).
Of course, Apple does exactly the same thing with their OS, apps, and hardware. Such is the reality of the business... but security-wise Apple had the advantage of starting over in the late 90's, by layering their GUI over an established BSD Unix foundation. They leapfrogged Windows like it wasn't even there. OTOH, if Apple had tried to merely "improve" the old MacOS the way Microsoft continues to merely "improve" NT, Apple would have died out completely by 2003.
When do you suppose Microsoft will finally stop polishing the NT turd, and put the Windows GUI over Unix? (And I'm only half kidding: Microsoft was a Unix house two decades before Apple became one, and they know it's the right way to do things.) Opinion?