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So, I assume enough people have at least heard of the Microsoft plunge into the antivirus realm. What I wasn't aware of, however, was the number of useful features were going to be in the package for the health of the OS as a whole, and not just for things like e-mail or some documents (which is why I'm posting this to OS, since it is so pertinent).
We all typically suggest to end-users that they should have an A/V, a firewall, and so on. Not counting the freeware scanners, the two main options have been Norton and McAffee for the consumer end. NOD32 has been seeing an up-swing in popularity, mostly due to it becoming popular to the type of crowd who posts here. There are other options, but when you walk into an electronics store you are mostly hit with Norton and McAffee as your main options
Microsoft has had a working firewall for years, and since the advent of XP Service Pack 2 it has had a pretty easy-to-use firewall. However, the likes of ZoneAlarm still have a strong presence, because they are so visually easy to figure out and don't take much thought from the end-user. Since they bought Giant, Microsoft has had a steadily improving piece of antispyware software, as well. One Care goes beyond both of those, adding better firewall capability, an antivirus scanner, a scheduled defrag, cleanup, and even a backup job. Because I already had a Microsoft Live account and because one license purchase covers 3 computers (making it the cheapest for-pay antivirus), I decided to try it out.
Holy crap! Where the heck was this five years ago? Where was it one year ago, when I decided to eschew Norton altogether? I had actually already created scheduled defrags and cleanup jobs using batch files and the cleanmgr command, but this program now makes it easy for me to suggest it to my family members (who live across the country) without me having to also teach them how to create regular system maintenance tasks. I saw it selling for around $50 in stores here (Dallas), which spread across the allowed three systems still only amounts to a little more than $16 for each computer. I bought mine from Amazon for $30, where that alone kicks the crap out of Norton or McAffee suites.
To run One Care, you have to register to their Live program (use your Passport ID), but other than that the process is the same as installing any other A/V system. The user control panel could use some tweaks on Microsoft's end, to allow for some more granular tweaking by home users, but overall things are solid. It gets automatically scheduled and you can run the "Tune Up" to manually have it defrag and clean your system. I also like the fact that it runs Microsoft Update instead of just Windows Update-- those of you using MS Office who haven't gone to windowsupdate and installed MS Update are seriously missing out.
This one program takes care of a lot of the major OS concerns I have for new users that I've supported. How is it that this hasn't gotten more attention than it has? I read a report that it debuted with a popularity second only to Symantec, but I hadn't heard much about it that I didn't look up on my own before deciding to install it myself last week.
Has anyone else tried this out on your system? Since I don't game, I have no idea how it affects gaming performance. I haven't noticed any drops in performance so far, and I don't see any more overhead with it than I would with any other A/V software. Have other people had worse experiences?
We all typically suggest to end-users that they should have an A/V, a firewall, and so on. Not counting the freeware scanners, the two main options have been Norton and McAffee for the consumer end. NOD32 has been seeing an up-swing in popularity, mostly due to it becoming popular to the type of crowd who posts here. There are other options, but when you walk into an electronics store you are mostly hit with Norton and McAffee as your main options
Microsoft has had a working firewall for years, and since the advent of XP Service Pack 2 it has had a pretty easy-to-use firewall. However, the likes of ZoneAlarm still have a strong presence, because they are so visually easy to figure out and don't take much thought from the end-user. Since they bought Giant, Microsoft has had a steadily improving piece of antispyware software, as well. One Care goes beyond both of those, adding better firewall capability, an antivirus scanner, a scheduled defrag, cleanup, and even a backup job. Because I already had a Microsoft Live account and because one license purchase covers 3 computers (making it the cheapest for-pay antivirus), I decided to try it out.
Holy crap! Where the heck was this five years ago? Where was it one year ago, when I decided to eschew Norton altogether? I had actually already created scheduled defrags and cleanup jobs using batch files and the cleanmgr command, but this program now makes it easy for me to suggest it to my family members (who live across the country) without me having to also teach them how to create regular system maintenance tasks. I saw it selling for around $50 in stores here (Dallas), which spread across the allowed three systems still only amounts to a little more than $16 for each computer. I bought mine from Amazon for $30, where that alone kicks the crap out of Norton or McAffee suites.
To run One Care, you have to register to their Live program (use your Passport ID), but other than that the process is the same as installing any other A/V system. The user control panel could use some tweaks on Microsoft's end, to allow for some more granular tweaking by home users, but overall things are solid. It gets automatically scheduled and you can run the "Tune Up" to manually have it defrag and clean your system. I also like the fact that it runs Microsoft Update instead of just Windows Update-- those of you using MS Office who haven't gone to windowsupdate and installed MS Update are seriously missing out.
This one program takes care of a lot of the major OS concerns I have for new users that I've supported. How is it that this hasn't gotten more attention than it has? I read a report that it debuted with a popularity second only to Symantec, but I hadn't heard much about it that I didn't look up on my own before deciding to install it myself last week.
Has anyone else tried this out on your system? Since I don't game, I have no idea how it affects gaming performance. I haven't noticed any drops in performance so far, and I don't see any more overhead with it than I would with any other A/V software. Have other people had worse experiences?
