Preston Gralla and Dave Methvin's article How to make Windows XP last for the next seven years was written almost two years ago for ComputerWorld is still worth reading.

Recently Microsoft went so far as to create a custom version of Windows XP for the Air Force after NSA penetration testing demonstrated how vulnerable default configurations can be. Wired reports:

NSA pen-testers made Swiss cheese of the network, and found that more than two-thirds of their intrusions were possible because of poorly configured software that created vulnerabilities. In some cases, the culprit was an operating system or application that came bloated with unsecured features that were never re-configured securely by Air Force administrators. In other cases, systems that were configured securely became vulnerable later (for instance, when a system crashed and original software was re-installed without patches that had been on the system before the crash).

The problem isn't that the Air Force didn't know how to lock down XP, the problem was that it was difficult to track and maintain the more secure configurations. The same can't be said for the average netbook user who is breathing new life into the XP market. Microsoft should make the more secure version available to the general public. Sure there will be some issues with applications that may need configuration changes or patches to run in the more secure configuration but the benefits of a locked down operating system can outweigh those costs.