"The writer obviously needs a lesson in Microsoft security if his reason for calling Vista more secure than XP is 'You have to patch it less'."
I think it's a decent measure. It gives you an idea of how much a system is likely to be affected by potential security threats. Most threats are going to be from the Internet, not from a local repair shop.
"simply shutdown Windows, and either use a Windows Recovery CD, or put your hard drive into another system."
This is an extremely rare worst case scenario. You need physical access to the system to perform such an attack.
If somebody is going THAT far to grab your data, then all Linux, UNIX, and MacOS systems are vulnerable as well. The only thing that will protect you from that type of attack is an encrypted drive.
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