Comments on: Microsoft: Goodbye OneCare, Hello Resource-Friendly Free Antivirus

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:34 +0000

Considering MS’s poor showing in virus protection with OneCare (almost the worst detection rate of all the scanners (wow, McAfee is actually WORSE!) I’d recommend that everyone should pass on any virus scanner from them for now - maybe it would get better later. For now, AVG, Avast, and Avira all outperform these two handily.

From the sounds of it the new version will be better. They've said the new one will be done almost from scratch, and won't just be a modification of OneCare.

Omar Upegui wrote:

I echo with your words. I don’t understand why Ryan said, “Honestly this is a really smart move by Microsoft.” I don’t think Microsoft is a smart company anymore. All they do is play the catching up game in a world they don’t understand—the Internet.

The reason I think this is smart is because I see so many people running their computer without any antivirus protection or running without extremely outdated signatures. While Avast and AVG are great they haven't become mainstream enough yet so most people don't realize they can get antivirus protection without paying. I'm hoping Microsoft will be able to conquer that barrier.

Mohan wrote:

This is pretty cool, I like that idea, but I wonder how this is going to affect the free AV vendors like AVG?

If it's really as efficient as Microsoft is making it sound I'm guessing it will have a pretty big impact.

By: Michael Dobrofsky

Michael Dobrofsky — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:56:46 +0000

Ryan, you don’t need AV on Vista. Just run with Limited User and UAC on and AV becomes redundant. Seriously.

By: Michael Dobrofsky

Michael Dobrofsky — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:55:09 +0000

Mohan wrote:

This is pretty cool, I like that idea, but I wonder how this is going to affect the free AV vendors like AVG?

AVG did more than enough damage to itself with their version 8

By: Mohan

Mohan — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:23:14 +0000

This is pretty cool, I like that idea, but I wonder how this is going to affect the free AV vendors like AVG?

By: netster007x

netster007x — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:24:46 +0000

Sounds awesome and I want it. Too bad the school’s internet service annoyingly requires their provided Symantec antivirus & clean access agent to get on the web. Oh well, eventually!

By: Omar Upegui

Omar Upegui — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:57:11 +0000

@dtanderson:

I echo with your words. I don’t understand why Ryan said, “Honestly this is a really smart move by Microsoft.” I don’t think Microsoft is a smart company anymore. All they do is play the catching up game in a world they don’t understand—the Internet.

By: dtanderson

dtanderson — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:45:23 +0000

I will stick with Avast. I am trying to ween myself from MS not make myself more reliant on them. I ditched MS Office for OpenOffice, IE for Firefox, Outlook Express for Thunderbird, and Messenger for Pidgin. I really want to ditch Windows for Linux but the game support is just not there and that is the only thing keeping me from ditching Windows.

By: Schwinn

Schwinn — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:37:02 +0000

See [av-comparatives.org] then click on “Comparatives” on the left, then “Online Results” for the latest On-demand test… sorry, but they don’t want direct-linking.

Considering MS’s poor showing in virus protection with OneCare (almost the worst detection rate of all the scanners (wow, McAfee is actually WORSE!) I’d recommend that everyone should pass on any virus scanner from them for now – maybe it would get better later. For now, AVG, Avast, and Avira all outperform these two handily.