Ever since I got my Ubuntu notebook computer, I can't fail to notice how fast it starts up (and shuts down) compared to my Windows Vista notebook. Other than the system itself, the virus program seems to take more and more time as it checks for seemingly millions of possible virus attacks. More and more viruses are added each minute, and there will come a time when it takes hours to check them all. At that point Windows will have died, or at least its users will get too angry to use it.

That doesn't even count the many rather pesky and time consuming upgrades of Vista and the virus programs. Worst of those are the once that insist that the computer be rebooted! It takes my Vista machine close to five minutes to do so.

What AV are you using?

Ubuntu doomed to glutton?

If you have installed one of the bloated mafia style protection systems then you might find things a bit slow.

I use Vista as a dual boot with openSuse. Not a huge difference between the two. But then I do use a free protection system so the developers aren't sat there thinking of pointless 'features' that don't really do much other than look good and use resources that they can add so that you are more likely to buy it next year..

What is anti-virus?

Call me naive but I run my Vista naked. I figure I can avoid 90% of infection problems by just not clicking links/opening suspicious programs/using certain MS software. It makes me chuckle to think about just how sorely wrong I could be; my system could be riddled with viruses/trojans for all I know.

Oh well, that's why I dual boot.

I have to use Windows when programming.
Both .Net and NuSphere are on there

But for everything else, I run openSuse. Only security on there is what came as standard and I have never had any problems

it gets worse - current security does not seem to detect and block bad (malware) activeX very well.
you can evaluate yourself via running
RegistryPC utility > scan block bad activex > note list, note any trojans
http://www.registrypc.com/features.php

this utility appears to be to new to have been compromised by serious parasites - which is another depressing subject

My Vista install takes absolutely forever to reboot. So I only reboot when I have critical system updates that are being enforced by IT (I'd run it naked as well, but IT again enforces restrictions on that). Seems to avoid the problem satisfactorily, if not ideal.

To infarction - seems like your IT dept may have installed security applications that load upon startup but are hidden
although VISTA is renowned for slow booting
To my surprise installing Windows 7 beta proved surprisingly quick with full booting to zero spu usage at less than 60 seconds with typical home owner security @2.8GHz cpu speed.
So maybe some improvements when your IT dept implements Windows 7

yeah, I'd be running Win7 now, except there isn't upgrade support from the RC to the final version. Quite looking forward to the perf boost though.

Who gets viruses? You have to try hard to get viruses on Windows. Stop pirating software, then you won't get viruses.