Microsoft's battle against viruses and spam. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. They are annoyances that have become bothersome enough to warrant the attention of lawmakers in Washington. But Microsoft is promising new tools to fight unwanted email... .and computer viruses. Chief technical officer Craig Mundie tells us while they may not be eliminated...

"I think particularly with respect to spam, we'll see dramatic improvements. To some extent when people look at their inbox and they see things that they know just aren't what should be there, they don't have any trouble in deciding to just delete it. The challenge has been to get the computer to be as discerning as people are."

Microsoft has started to employ what it calls SmartScreen technology in its Hotmail service and latest version of Outlook. In the meantime... continuing virus attacks could cost Microsoft business. A survey conducted by Merrill Lynch earlier this year found 40 percent of chief information officers at companies were considering a move to the Linux operating system because of virus concerns. To that, Mundie says...

"I think if you look at the statistics you'll find out that Linux and almost any of the other systems actually have a greater than or equal number of vulnerabilities to Microsoft."

But says Mundie... virus writers and hackers tend to target Windows machines because of the popularity of the operating system. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.