Scary stuff. Some British government officials were able to hack into a relatively unprotected Windows XP system through a wireless network so fast, "your coffee wouldn't even have cooled down yet."

A Microsoft executive calls the ease with which two British e-crime specialists managed to hack into a Windows XP computer as both "enlightening and frightening."

The demonstration took place Monday at an event sponsored by Get Safe Online--a joint initiative of the U.K. government and industry. At the event, which was aimed at heightening security awareness among small businesses, two members of the U.K. government intelligence group Serious Organized Crime Agency connected a machine running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 to an unsecured wireless network. The machine was running no antivirus, firewall, or anti-spyware software and contained a sample target file of passwords to be stolen.

The lesson here is not, "hey that's an unpatched, unprotected system. My systems would never be that unmanaged." No, the lesson here is that no matter how hard you try, there are always going to be options open to the hackers.

The other lesson here, if you read the full article is that Windows XP is quite literally no longer a good platform to run your business network. The advancements in Windows Vista are good enough, that at the very least you should be in the process now of upgrading at least your laptops.

Still scared of migrating to Vista? Let us know why. Seriously.