This year has been mercifully quiet on the virus front but anyone who reckons the virus problem has finally been beaten is failing to learn the lessons of history.

The problem of computer viruses has been declared 'over' before, only to be 'reinvented' a few months later, argues David Perry, a marketing manager at Trend Micro.

In the mid 90s, for example, when Microsoft moved to a virtualised 32-bit OS this greatly reduced the potential effects of boot sector viruses. There wasn't much relief for users though, since this threat rapidly was supplanted with the emergence of Word concept viruses.

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