i just installed and so far i'm very impressed with it. i would actually consider buying this and paying a subscription for it. M$ is moving in the right direction with this concept.

Is it possible to uninstall it if I don't like it?

Yes. Add/Remove programs will get rid of it completely.

Thanks. It's a pitty that it's only open to the US ATM (Or did I read that wrong?)

I'm in Argentina, and using it.

There's no "start with Windows" option, or I missed it?

Ummm... yeah. It has to start with Windows. There's no way to disable it that I know of (other than manually editing the registry).

As a systemmadministrator with users that open every email attachment they can get their hands on, I'm happy with this. Wouldn't use this at home though, even if I had a pc with windows.

I found it interesting to note that when I - several months back - recieved my onecare cd from MS, that it didnt recognize my win xp pro 64 bit as win xp. I contacted ms about it and was told "there is no current plans to support 64 bit windows xp pro with onecare live".
Nice to know that not even MS wants to support xp pro 64 bit.
sure wished Panda av would release their 64 bit solution soon

What percentage of users actually have a 64 bit WinXP computer? I bet they'll cover the masses first, then the few ones with WinXP 64 ;)

Actually, this is a good thing because 99 percent of people that use computers are too stupid to keep their antivirus software updated. It's sad what I come across in my day to day routine dealing with other peoples PC's. Plus, it's BS how they make you pay each year in the first place. If Mcafee did not come free with comcast, I would use avast. Norton is the most worthless piece of crap on the market.

Yikes, and you work with other peoples PC's. Sounds to me like you have a lot of bottled up anger there. If you work in the computer industry, I hope you work for free and don't charge for your service. After all folks might want your services free just as you want them provided to you for free.

Why wouldn't MS just include this as part of the packaged OS. It’s the MS OS that has all the vulnerabilities and issues so they should include this because of the security holes in the OS. It should be FREE. Its great to see them take the iniative but its too late I guess, Symantec and McAfee has the market covered and they want a bit of everything even though they can't get the OS to work properly. Focus on fixing Winblows first. Just my 2¢.

Anti-trust... because the only thing Symantec (Norton) and McAfee are going to have going for them once it's released is their existing user-base and name recognition.

Of course, there are a lot of techs like myself who are fed up with both of them being so grossly resource intensive in recent versions that alternatives are a lot more attractive.

Apparently Norton antivirus 2006 edition is supposed to be a big improvement over their earlier work. Have you heard anything about this? Not that i'm going to be buying it, since I'm pleased as punch with NOD32. Just curious.

Bah..stick with NOD32. If you are going to revert to a Symantec product for AV, go for Symantec Antivirus Corp Edition, it's definitely better from a sysadmin perspective, as well as it runs constantly in the background with minimal impact on performance.

Taken from the following MS OC Live page: http://www.windowsonecare.com/

"What is it?
The things you should have to help protect your PC, but probably don't because they're such a hassle—stuff like virus scanning, firewall settings, tune-ups, and file backups—all delivered to you in a friendly, easy-to-use package that runs quietly in the background."

What an insulting statement! Only an effing moron runs a pc without a firewall and antivirus!

Then 80% of computer users are morons.

Oh wait. Yeah. That's right.

**EDIT**
Yes, I pulled that number out of nowhere. I guess I just have an optimistic outlook about computer users =p

OMG! Please tell me it isn't true! I guess I'll have to take your word for it, because you'll know better than I. That's a frightening stat.

Only 80% are idiots??? Try more like 99% of computer users are idiots.

The other 1% post idiotic statements to forums..

hahahaha...

Ok ok... so I made up the number...

I'd say you're in the ballpark.

Like I said, I'd say you're in the ballpark.

Actually, according to this article:

http://www.clickz.com/st...are/article.php/3426951

81% of computer users polled didn't have anti-virus software.

I guess I wasn't that far off lol.

However, it is old (over a year old)...

The problem is everyone thinks they're a security guru, just because a successful scan with adaware.

When my college did fall registration of computers for network access, we installed Symantec Corporate Edition on everyone's system so that we could manage subscriptions. Why? Because the previous year (and matched this year) we found that only 8% of the students had any antivirus protection installed at all. Of those that did, most of them only had unactivated trials of Norton or McAfee installed by their PC manufacturer, and they never bothered to renew when the trial expired.

I hate to say it, but to add to wincement's post, you're also overlooking the number of users who may have installed a product in years past, but haven't bothered to update their subscriptions... or the ones who tried ZoneAlarm or similar product and had their favorite app stop working because they didn't know what they were doing.

Not a good idea to rely on this product.

If you use/used Sygate Firewall, it's time to move on, Symantec discontinued the product and offers a discount for their firewall...Do not buy, your better off asking your magic 8 ball if your infected.

So, It's time to test and determine the best software firewall, besides Sygate...RIP. I'm thinking Outpost, but I plan on testing the top 5 tonight.

As for virus protection, I'm leaning towards Kaspersky. Pro version is the only way to go, so wait a month and get Kaspersky Pro 6.0.

Spyware, too many to discuss, I recommended.

And if you are one of those poeple that say, I just want to click a few times and have my computer scanned, cleaned for virus and spyware, check this program out:

http://hitmanpro.nl

"Not a good idea to rely on this product."

Why? I'll admit it's not the best solution for advanced users, but why recommend avoiding it altogether? I think it will be a great product for all the "one-click" users that don't want the hassle of 10 different security programs.

**EDIT**
And Kaspersky is a great A/V, but it tends to be heavy on resource usage. Not nearly as much as NAV, but still... it's up there.

Nod32 or F-prot would be my choice before Kaspersky.

If your a one click kinda security person, I still recommend www.hitmanpro.nl , this product downloads all the best free Spyware tools, disables messanger services and configured browser settings for you, all done by macros. Meaning you don't do anything but walk away and come back an hour later. Provides more than OneCare.

"And Kaspersky is a great A/V, but it tends to be heavy on resource usage. Not nearly as much as NAV, but still... it's up there.

Nod32 or F-prot would be my choice before Kaspersky."

NAV? Norton Antivirus? horrible detection rate.

F-Prot - okay, but not on same level as Kaspersky. F-secure is only good for blacklight and their blog. AV is plain and weak.

NOD32, I cannot say anything against them. I hear that is a great product.

As for system resources, I've found AVG to scan my entire system in 10 minutes, KAV around 25-30. Heavy on resources, maybe a little, but protection is unbeatable.

--- this is all my opinion based on my testing ---

Nah. I'm not a 1-click security person. I'll do as much work as it takes to make sure my PC is secure =). It's been air-tight with no infection of any sort for the past 18 months =).

"--- this is all my opinion based on my testing ---"

Yeah. My comment was too. Nothing official really to back it up with.

I totally agree with your comment about NAV lol.

Ok, So NOD32, KAV, AVG, F-PROT on the AV test.

and what about firewalls? I've been a sygate users for a long time and need a backup now that symantec gave them the axe....

Outpost, ...?

I don't care for the one-clickedness either. I was hoping in the first versions that they'd throw out an extra version or more in-depth options that let more advanced users do or change more. But after a while (and the newest refresh), i've come to realize, it's not entirely necessary. If you have a virus scanner that scans EVERYTHING and a firewall that checks all your apps/connections then what more does one really need? My peeve with onecare in the past was that you couldn't install stuff like Yahoo Messenger with the firewall enabled because it's one of those programs that downloads a fresh (wierdly named) install everytime, and the onecare firewall isn't too smart, so it kept blocking the install - ofcourse, by the time you hit 'allow next time' it's too late and you have to just turn off the firewall to install it. All in all, i've had issues with everything I've used. I moved onecare from my beta machine to my main machine, to see it work in a heavy use environment and it's working out great. My 2 solutions otherwise are Avast and Sygate, with Sygate dead I will probably just do the Mcafee Online Firewall (free with aol, msn and my comcast subscriptions) until something else comes in the event that I choose to remove onecare. I'm not a fan of Nod or Kaspersky because they detect alot of things as viruses when they aren't...even on normal heur. settings....this is similar to Mcafee antivirus which I recently had on one of my machines. It proceded to remove about 40% of my uninstall files as viruses after a bad signature thought they were. Worst part is they weren't even quarantined, they were REMOVED completely. Suffice to say, I had to reinstall about 35 programs in order to get their uninstallers back....One was a tranform pack (XPize). I've had this with Mcafee in the past where it removed (didn't ask, didn't quarantine) a bunch of files that it thought were trojans. I thought they had their game together, I was wrong. Def. never put that back on any of my machines again. I found that Avast is most useful, since it scans every area (files, p2p, messengers, and email). The free version lacks a scheduler, but you really don't need one. The good thing is that onecare will be under one pricing scheme, so you'll pay maybe 30 or so a year for all that protection. Avast pro is 34 a year....so I guess I'll just weigh my options and the features of both till Onecare requires a fee from me.

I've always been a Kerio fan, and now that one's going away too. I'll probably still stick with the last version for a while though.

Personal Experience Prefs:

NOD32 is my current favorite. 2x 200GB drives, 1x 300GB drive, 2x 36GB Raptors in RAID 0 and it only took about 10 minutes. Blazing fast, daily updates, robust functionality.

F-prot is solid. Not much else to add. Good balance.

McAfee changes with the wind. Sometimes it's really solid, sometimes I would rather have AVG (which I don't care for either).

Kaspersky has it's strong points, so I can't really discount it completely.

Norton AV is a resource hog and provides reasonable protection.

Symatec AV Corp Edition is pretty solid and has minimal resource usage (I would use this if I didn't run NOD32).

There are many out there that honestly don't realize that Symantec AV and Norton AV are 2 completely different products...beware :-)

I installed it.

Then Opera wouldn't work anymore.
Firefox wouldn't work anymore.

IE can still access the internet, and Outlook 2003 can still access the internet.

NOTHING ELSE CAN! So I figured, I'll just uninstall OneCare. Still doesn't work. Uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox... still doesn't work.
Even tried a SYSTEM RESTORE. Nothing works but Outlook and IE.

I'm super pissed.

Did you uninstall your previous firewall (and any other security software) before hand?

I'm guessing the answer is no. They tell you that you need to remove that stuff before you install...

Then your system was more than likely compromised before you installed OneCare. I've been a beta tester forever and have had only 1 problem after the uninstallation, and that is with the actual windows firewall...and that was even a long time ago after one of the refreshes. Now it works pretty great, they've worked alot of the bugs out and are currently working on customizing the featureset for use by most people (what the majority want). It's funny because every suggested change I've proposed to them they've put in to date, so I feel almost empowered by that :). Anyway, if you install OneCare on a clean system, I don't think you'll have these problems. I suggest you re-install it and tell it's firewall to allow everything and then uninstall it again. If you have programs that don't allow changes to the system without you knowing, I can see OneCare messing up the system being uninstalled. (For instance, if you're using Spybot's teatimer).

I've been using One Care for several months now. I've never had a problem it's worked like a charm. These prblems suggest your pre-OneCare setup was already borked.

would i have to uninstall nod32 & sygate if i used this? althought when they did the scan they didn't say i have any conflicting softwares...

Officially, they want you to uninstall any other anti-virus, firewall, and anti-spyware programs you have before installing Onecare.

I come from the land of NOD32.

And you are a better person for it ;-)

"Any Windows XP SP2 user can now register to download the latest beta release."

LOL, too bad...the SP1 users are the ones who need it the most!

hey bud? sp1 users need sp2 the most!! LMFAO upgrade u clown ;-)

For the record I DO have SP2...

Still a little immature at this point. It didn't detect a few viruses i sent at it that Avast! did. The anti-spyware appears the same as MS Anti-spyware, and the firewall is too assuming.

I'll wait till the enterprise version of this (windows commander or something like that) comes out. It should (better be!) be more mature when they release it to compete with the enterprise versions of these AV giants.

Buggy

youre right about the firewall, it automatically blocks absolutely everything with the exception of IE, MS Office Products, and the like.

It automatically blocks everything the first time, and then asks you if you want to allow it in the future or not.

It also recognizes a lot of programs automatically that should be allowed through (even non-MS products), such as AOL, YAHOO, and MSN messengers, Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, Spyware Blaster, Emsisoft A2, and Yahoo Anti-Spy. ...just to name a few.

That's one of the things that has impressed me the most with Onecare. They went a lot farther with the auto-detection of what's legit and what's not than I have seen any other firewall-maker go.

HATE IT CANT USE IT ON DANISH VERSION OF WINXP, what did i pay for ? not to beta test ?

It is not the duty of any software company to ensure that their beta software will work on anyone's computer.

Now, if this was a final release, you would have every right to complain. However, since it's not, you don't =)

Just a quick warning about WindowsOneCare: If you run a laptop security program, like Computrace, it may disable and quarantine the files that make those programs work. This is a reported bug, but it was closed because Microsoft couldn't "reproduce" it. Trust me, it will reproduce just fine if you have the laptop security program ON the machine.

I think this is a great program. No, it's not as configurable as I'd like, but it works, it doesn't ask for much in terms of resources, and overall it's a good program. I will probably keep it just because it does what it's supposed to. I don't really need something that's overly configurable.

Plus, when you sign up for the beta, you get a 1-year subscription for free. When it does go final, it will be a paid subscription service. No word on pricing yet, though.

Great job on this one I have been beta testing this since day one. The new open beta is free give it a try it's worth a look see.
People won't stick with Norton it's a resource hog and a piece of crap!
Keep in mind this is still in beta.

I tried NAV 2006 the other day (yeah Symantec...but NAV is easier to type! Lol not anymore), and considering how atrocious their other versions are, they finally got it right! All the bugs are gone, it updates every day instead of once a week (which was USELESS), it actually works if you accidentally mess up the CLSID extentions in IE, it will completely uninstall unlike other the versions--it really shocked me. I was truly astounded, I think my jaw dropped--I just could not believe the amount of change between 2005 and 2006. (See? MS is actually making the competition better :) Still not going to use it but it has gotten sooo much better between 2005 and 2006. Now, Symantec Utilities Suite 2006--it still sucks. Just get the AV.

Oh yeah this is about OneCare! Yeah it seems ok, but hard to say as I don't really get many viruses anymore with my firewall and updated OS...has potential for sure though.

I'm going with NAV this year, since I did some beta-testing with it and I know it works well. The testers and developers were really tough on bugs this time, even solving the perrenial uninstall issues that used to leave files behind. Is it perfect? Hell no, but then I have never seen a program that was.

OneCare, in my opinion, is still too buggy, and Microsoft's beta-testing doesn't seem to be as thorough as some other companies.

WOC is for Grandma and Mom. WOC is not user friendly and you can't change settings in it. On the other hand, WOC doesn't cause as much of a boot time increase as some of the others do, the virus scanner works nice, and the firewall works well. I don't like ho wit denies an app and then asks if you want to allow it, I do think they should change it to just put it on hold. Over all I would have to say that WOC would be great for Mom, but Dad would hate it.

Not user friendly?

I would be hard pressed to find security software that is easier to use. Maybe you mean it's not advanced-user friendly? I would agree with that since there's not a whole lot of settings that you can play around with. It does almost everything by itself.

When something won't let you decide what you want it to do, I call that non user-friendly.

I attempted to download it from my Mozilla Firefox browser but it told me I need to open IE and try again. Sorry, no can do. Also, there is no pricing info on the site even though they take you through a five set process to purchast the "beta" product. I thought the use of the term "beta" was just a marketing technic to draw people in, but now I can see this product is not ready for primetime.

"I attempted to download it from my Mozilla Firefox browser but it told me I need to open IE and try again. Sorry, no can do."

Oh Waah! Waah! Somebwody cawll the wahhmbulence! God forbid you actually use IE! Did you know that you use IE any time you...

1. Load Windows,
2. Open My Computer,
3. Open any folder, use Windows Explorer, Control Panel, Microsoft Office apps, COREL Wordperfect (7.0 and later), Symantec Antivirus (and 95% of all the other AV programs), Windows Updates...

Is IE that evil, that you will not use it even if it means added security? If so, why do you even use Windows? Buy a Mac or use Linux, and then bash Windows--since IE is a part of Windows no matter what you try it is extremely difficult to get away from. Otherwise, just use FireFox as your primary browser and don't be so hardened against MS products.

There's no price mentioned because they don't have one designated yet. They will have pricing information when it comes out of beta.

Calm down bourgeoisdude :-) He may not have Windows...har har :-) He *could* have uninstalled IE from his system, but that would get ugly...yikes.

#1) Requires MSIE to access:

http://beta.windowsonecare.com/purchase

#2) If it's not free, people will stick to Norton and/or McAfee.

#3) They will likely bundle a 30-day version with Vista -- which would launch anti-trust suits much like between WMP and Real etc., IE and NS etc.

--

I think that due to the vulnerabilities in Windows and the nature of most windows-based viruses over the life of XP, virus protection, anti-spam, and firewall (check!) should all 3 be a part of windows and provided out of the box.

"They will likely bundle a 30-day version with Vista -- which would launch anti-trust suits much like between WMP and Real etc., IE and NS etc."

You're probably right. One thing I forgot--why can't MS sue Dell, HP, and Sony for bundling Symantec Antivirus on their PC's too? Or RealOne Player? Or WildTangent SPYWARE? Or MusicMatch? WinDVD? Sonic RecordNow? Answer: because MS wouldn't win, since everyone in court seems to hold grudges against them. Bah...nevermind.

Bundling in itself isn't illegal. Using a monopoly to leverage a product in order to wipe out competition is illegal.

It's about capitalism and the rule of law with the complete blessing of Adam Smith.

Why wouldn't MS just include this as part of the packaged OS. It’s the MS OS that has all the vulnerabilities and issues so they should include this because of the security holes in the OS. It should be FREE.

OneCare is nice for my family and non-techie friends. It is not very configurable, so I didn't like it.

The features are nice, and the antivirus seems quite capable. Seeing as how MS bought RAV years back, I was hoping for something along the lines of what used to be my favorite antivirus app.

"Ominous" for those 3 companies is ok by me. They all suck in their own special ways.