Microsoft blames OEMs for slow Windows 8 sales, plans February "relaunch"

[Phillip McCleod]

206. true market share is a factor but not as big as all that.

windows only has a corner on the commercial desktop/laptop market. most government, industrial and corporate information infrastructure runs on the same o.s. as the internet.. some kind of unix. if virus writers really wanted to make an impact you'd think they'd target these systems not grandma's old gateway.

fact is virus writers write for windows for a combination of reasons.. commercial market share, yes.. and in part because its users tend to be on the shallow-end of the techno-savvy pool so don't take precautions, yes..

but also because windows cares more about the security of microsoft's licenses than the security of its userspace. it's stupidly easy to write virus for windows that can wreak havok because there's no clearly defined security layer between the kernel and the program space. it would be hella hard if not impossible to write for instance a rootkit virus for linux.