Microsoft Dropping Windows Live OneCare

[Bulldog]

Microsoft has made an announcement that it will cancel its Windows Live OneCare PC care and security suite and replace it with a free anti-malware utility called "Morro". That will be nice to make another free program available for anti-malware.

Also I read that Microsoft is pulling the subscription service called "Equipt" off the shelves. They just launch that service about 4 months ago. Unbelievable!

The link below is Microsoft's announcement on One Care:

Microsoft Announces Plans for No-Cost Consumer Security Offering: New anti-malware solution will broaden PC protection and help improve Windows experience.

 

[jcrandall]

Equipt was a retail test they ran only at Circuit City.

If they are pulling it, the test must not have done well. It was a bundle of onecare and office together with a one year subscription for both.

That's right - a subscription for office.

No suprise at $70/yr it didn't do well.

 

[JamesJ]

I had one care on my moms computer and it was alright, but I went with AVG for anti virus and some other free products, I will defiently give this a look and see what its about...

 

[Bulldog]

Equipt was a retail test they ran only at Circuit City.

If they are pulling it, the test must not have done well. It was a bundle of onecare and office together with a one year subscription for both.

That's right - a subscription for office.

No suprise at $70/yr it didn't do well.

Yea, subscriptions might be a new marketing concept because both Trend Micro and Webroot Spy Sweeper are also available in subscription terms.

 

[JIGGIEFLY]

Well thats microsoft for ya here today and gone tomarrow, I just used Windows Live OneCare to check out my system and seemed to work very well sorry to see it go away.

 

[mike123abc]

I dropped onecare, it was a pain. It was always wanting to do something and tie up your computer and asking you questions. Updates, scans, defragging HD, etc. It would be one thing if it did it quitely in the background, but no, it wanted you to know it was bogging down your computer with pop ups and confirmations.

Cancelling was hard too, the only way to cancel was to call in, they autobilled your CC and did not have a way to unsubscribe except to call.

Now they are going to give it away for free. Less problems if all the developing countries have antivirus to stop the bot armies. Why does Windows still need antivirus programs? One would think that after 6 and now 7 versions they would have managed to get rid of the security holes...

 

[8bitbytes]

I ... Less problems if all the developing countries have antivirus to stop the bot armies. Why does Windows still need antivirus programs? One would think that after 6 and now 7 versions they would have managed to get rid of the security holes...

Viruses are on the way out these days. I rarely see one come in anymore. The primary menace is the drive-by malware trojan with rootkit extensions and since 1 out of every 1,000 web pages is now poisoned with a drive-by infection, you can pick one up pretty easily if you don't know what you are looking at.

With 30 million plus lines of code and people raging about when the next version is coming out, it's hard to say if closing every hole will ever be possible.

 

[Foxbat]

I had gotten OneCare for my Dad's MiniBook PC because it had a smaller memory footprint than Symantec or McAfee (at the time). Also, most of the reports from the Internet Storm Center showed that Microsoft had a better detection record of malware in the first 72 hours of release of a new variant than the AV Big Two. I had it configured to not prompt for acceptance (it still pops up a ballon from the SysTray icon to let you know if you want to cancel) so it wasn't too bad. In the last two years, though, it definitely could use up a Celeron with 256MB of RAM.

I always was able to find OneCare retail packages at Staples or on-line for under $20, so I never had to give Microsoft my credit card info. Just enter in the License Key and I was good for another year on my three home PCs. It was one of Microsoft's most affordable pieces of software. Now, it's going to be free!

But, I will miss the Tune-Up feature, even though the DeFrag seems to "corrupt" the PATA hard drive on my wife's Dell D2300. If I use the built-in Windows XP defrag, it doesn't have a problem; just the OneCare Live defragmenter does.