But not everyone agrees a virtualization lockdown is justified. In fact, virtualization has been considered a security enhancement. If applications run within their own walls, malicious code can be confined to that zone and not infect the rest of the computer.

"Nobody's complained to us that there's security issues with our products," said Srinivas Krishnamurti, director of product management at EMC Corp. unit VMWare, which plans to release a product for Macs this summer.

In a statement e-mailed after the interview, Krishnamurti added: "The Vista licensing limitation is akin to the industry saying, `Hey, consumer, when you connect your PC to the Internet, there is a chance you can download adware, spyware or malware so we don't think you should connect to the Internet using a browser.' The world would be a very different place if the industry made that decision in the '90s."

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Rudolph acknowledged that "there's always going to be a security risk in any piece of software." But he added that if Parallels "was really not that secure, we would have heard about it substantially."

And even Rutkowska, who argued that her virtualization attack last year — which she called "Blue Pill" — proved a glaring weakness in the technology, said Microsoft's decision regarding Vista would make no difference. "I really don't see how Microsoft could use this mechanism to prevent Blue Pill from loading," she said.

Apple would not take a position: Spokeswoman Lynn Fox said Mac users who want to run Windows in virtualized programs should ask the virtualization vendors about security.

Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said virtualization may indeed introduce new complexities and security challenges. "But they're not greater than the technical issues surrounding some of the other features (Microsoft) decided to include," he said. "I don't buy that virtualization is dangerous."

Cherry believes what's really going on is that Microsoft wanted to create more differences between the multiple editions of Vista, presumably giving people more reason to buy the most expensive versions.

But Microsoft's Woodgate insisted that this was not a marketing decision.

"We are absolutely working with our partners to resolve this security issue," he said.

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