Windows OneCare
Windows Live OneCare 2.0 goes into public beta
Windows Live OneCare is an automatically self-updating PC care service that’s on whenever your PC is on, helping provide persistent protection against viruses, hackers, and other threats. It also performs regular tune-ups to help keep your PC running at top speed, and helps you back up important documents.
- Runs quietly in the background, providing anti-virus, anti-spyware, online identity and scam protection (anti-phishing) and firewall protection
- Updates itself to help you keep ahead of the latest threats
- Runs regular PC tune-ups, even checking for ways to shorten PC boot-up time
- Provides one-click solutions to most problems
- Makes backups a breeze
- Lets you see the status of all your computer systems at a glance
Download here-http://get.live.com/betas/onecare_betas
Windows Live OneCare 2.0 beta almost here
In an email sent to Windows Live OneCare testers, Microsoft confirmed the imminent start of the OneCare 2.0 beta program. Designated as a “pre-premiere”, OneCare 2.0 will not be available as a public beta initially.
New features we should be seeing include:
- Multi PC management - designate a hub PC and then add additional PCs to your OneCare circle using a common Windows Live ID. You can then see the status of the other PCs within the group.
- Printer Sharing - share your printer with all the PCs in your OneCare circle
- OneCare Online Photo Backup - paid storage is available online for photo backups (we’re hearing 10GB but that could change by the end of the beta)
- Securing wireless networks - if your router is supported OneCare 2.0 will allow you to secure your wireless network
- x64 support
The ability to backup online is a feature we’ve been talking about for a while, as a potentially key part of storage in the cloud. Windows Live Folders is currently set at 500MB, but if 10GB is what is being offered for OneCare Photo backups, a significant increase for the final version seems more than likely.
If you haven’t signed up for the beta already, here’s the link.
OneCare Activation Explained
Our customers have a lot of questions about OneCare activation and want to know exactly what it is all about. We commonly hear feedback from customers who say that activation is only for the purposes of adding a second PC, but it is much more than that.
So why do customers need to activate in the first place? You may have noticed that OneCare is not a traditional software package, it is a subscription based service. One way to think about it is to compare it to your cell phone service, where you pay a fee for a period, receive updates to your service during that period and have a phone number associated with your service. Similarly, it is necessary for OneCare customers to have a Windows Live ID account so that we can provide them with the proper level of service. Getting a Windows Live ID means you have one simple way to interact with your OneCare account whether that means Activating a 2nd PC or getting support.
source: Windows Live OneCare Blog
Microsoft’s antivirus deletes users’ e-mails
IMPORTANT FOR USERS OF MICROSOFT ONECARE.
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE
Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users’ Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails.
According to postings on Microsoft’s OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the antivirus programme finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files -— the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users’ messages and other details are kept -— have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted.
One user commented on the forum: “Is there a chance to recover it? If not, OneCare will have done more damage than any virus in my 30 years of active computing.†Forum postings indicate, however, that recovery is possible in some cases, where the .pst or .dbx file is still available in OneCare’s quarantine facility.
Stephen Boots, a forum administrator, commented that he was “very unhappy about this problem as it was reported over a year ago and fixed in the 1.0 releaseâ€, adding: “It never appeared throughout the beta, but suddenly appeared when 1.5 was releasedâ€.
In a statement reported on Computerworld, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company was “working to address an issue where the antimalware engine for OneCare is erroneously quarantining Outlook .pst files or Outlook Express .dbx files, when the .pst file or .dbx file contains an infected attachmentâ€. The spokesperson added that a fix would be included in the next OneCare update, which is due on 13 March.
OneCare has been hit this year by ongoing criticism, having only days ago failed to achieve certification in an independent test of security products. Shortly before that, it emerged that the product did not sufficiently protect users of Microsoft’s Vista operating system against malware.
source: bink.nu
OneCare places last in AV comparison
In a report released February 28 and reported by Computerworld, Austrian researcher Andreas Cleminti from AV Comparatives rated Windows Live OneCare dead last out of 17 anti-virus programs, the only program in the comparison to receive no certification from Cleminti.
The report, available online in a report or in pdf form, rated G Data Security’s AntiVirusKit (AVK) the top performing AV program, catching 99.5 percent of malicious code in the comparison tests. OneCare came in well behind all of the other products, catching only 82.4 percent of the malware.
According to Computerworld, Microsoft responded to the results, saying:
“We are looking closely at the methodology and results of the test to ensure that Windows Live OneCare performs better in future tests,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
A quick search on AV Comparatives shows a number of anti-virus products touting their results in previous tests, from Nod32 to Kapersky, and AV Comparatives have been posting testing results since February of 2004. This appears to be the first test in which OneCare has been included.
