Comments on: Microsoft to offer free consumer security suite

Software giant cans its paid Windows Live OneCare service in favor of a free consumer software focused on protecting PCs against malware.

[tuneslover]

Great News. Though i think it will kill Kaspersky of Norton.

[jessekoehn]

Great, I just paid for 1 year last night, and now it's going to be free, I sure hope they offer refunds.

[Dalmatian28]

Finely...this should have been done long time ago! Microsoft does NOT need to make great software..."good enough" will do if it is free!!! For the company that has so much market power...you have to give them credit for this one!

[technewsjunkie]

Netscape revisited.

If you can't make a better product, give yours away free and bleed the competition's income dry. Oh yeah, and distribute it on the Windows desktop (distribution channel).

[Ted Miller]

Well I see it all the time, They bring up McAfee, Symantic, and Sophos all the time and the total ignore Adaware, Advanced Spyware remover, Anti-Spy Guard, AVG, Glarysoft, Malwarebytes, Spybot S&D, Spyware Guard, Spyware Blaster, Super AntiSpyware, Avast and Clam Antivirus to name just a few who give a freeware edition that works just fine. As a matter of fact many people like the better then McAfee, Norton and Sophos (Sophos is real good and should be recognized as such).

I just dipise the fact that there are those who work very hard in eradicating our problems and are not recognized for their efforts. Microsoft is giving out a free edition (thank you) as if these others do not exist. Is there a real story here we are missing??? In these difficult times and all the scamming being done to us by the big greedy corporate bigwigs, is this not the time to really be honest what is being done and what can be done to help us all.
Again THANK YOU microsoft for caring and it is your own backs you are trying to protect also ISINT IT!

[plbyrd]

This may be the single most well-written article in the history of C-Net. It's too the point, non-opinionated, and liberally quotes consumers and customers and allows the reader to make their own conclusions. Kudos!

[jypeterson]

This is laughable. Really? Microsoft to offer free security?

Microsoft just needs to scrap Windows all together and start over with a new kernal, new build, new OS -- and build in an option for legacy software support. Apple did this and moved away from OS 9, which was the last Mac OS that had actual, in-the-wild, viruses. Oh, and Ubantu doesn't have any either...

That would be the difficult, but smart choice. Now, you will have your antivirus checker pinging away, taking system resources and contributing to the software bloat.

[Life_on_Mars]

I got OneCare bundled with my ISP subscription, so basically it was free. Only problem was that it slowed my systems to a crawl; boot times increased by a factor of 400%, and it actually slowed down browsing. It reminded me of the days of a 386 computer with 14.4 dial-up, and my current systems are fairly new. After a month of that insanity, I uninstalled it and got AVG which is working like a charm. MS must know about the performance problems; during the uninstall, a feedback questionnaire asks why you are removing the program and gives as one of the multiple choice replies "slows system down." OneCare, goodbye and good riddance.

[sagohichi]

I am pretty sure that we will need additional anti-virus software for Morro.
This is just another way to charge Microsoft tax against non-cooperative customers.

[The_happy_switcher]

Nice of Microsnot to make something 'free' that shouldn't cost anything to begin with when you buy their
'secure' OS. /Sarcasm

[Cliffro]

You know how many "average" people know about the other "free" A/V programs? A lot less than the ones that know about Microsoft(in general) that's for sure.

Do you realize how many "average" people are probably running some outdated/expired AV? I'd guess that at least 70% of the people who's computers I work on, initially have that "Free" 60-90 day trial of whatever shipped with their computers, that's over a year expired and more than likely not updating signatures any longer.

Heck I didn't know much about the free Anti-virus programs either since I was using the Paid ones for so long. I wasn't sure which ones I could trust or were good enough or were total crap. I took a week or so to read reviews and such of them before I decided on Avast!. (i needed 64bit support)

The only issue I see is letting people know its actually available.

Oh and Super AntiSpyware was bought by Microsoft.

[pin_gwin]

The thing that created MS was a timely vision. I do not see it there any longer. I used to admire the company in 80-90th. Sorry, but it is all gone. Everything is too little, too late, or too annoying and buggy. And not new for sure. I use Firefox, AVG free. I positively tried to stay with Vista on my new laptops. I was trying hard to keep it, but it was a real relief from this torture to upgrade it to XP.
No, thanks.

[FargoUT]

Microsoft is a definite hit-or-miss company with software. While many criticize Vista, I haven't had many problems with it at all. I remember Windows 98, so maybe my expectations are just perpetually reduced, but Vista has worked fine on my laptop for the year I've owned it.

Microsoft Office is hands-down the best and most cost-effective office suite. While OpenOffice is free, it suffers from bloat and rarely offers anything new with each upgrade (except additional bloat). I have not been too big a supporter of Office until this new Office 2007, which I think hit a homerun, a vast improvement over previous versions.

But I rarely use Internet Explorer (the only thing I use it for is to watch NetFlix's Watch Instantly, and I could probably get by with Firefox's IE tab extension). Most software is turning towards cloud-based computing, and I think this may prove to be the end of Microsoft's stranglehold, especially on the browser market. IE is another piece of bloated software (and while they do get better it seems with each release, they still pale compared to Firefox--even Google's Chrome which is still in Beta).

Oh well, I'm not a Microsoft hater, as I do use their software quite willingly, but I also try to diversify my software usage. :)

[ace10134]

dude this sucks. i love onecare, and now i wont be able to use it? they should offer both programs, but i bet they'll get lots of customers on their free one now.

[zapped101]

To me the router handling the spyware, antivirus is the way to go. I run the untangle free software
on an old computer but would love to see linksys, dlink and others to offer something like that
in their routers. I am using the untangle at work and so far it works great, but the drawback is
you have to set up a computer with 2 nics to get it to work. So maybe we can stop loading all the
extra stuff onto our computers and let the router do it. I think this is a better future than Morro.

[Orion Blastar]

Apparently according to AVG Free Antivirus:
http://www.blogtactic.com/2008/11/avg-anti-virus-falsely-detects.html
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:AVG_Antivirus_detects_Microsoft_Windows_as_a_Virus

User32.DLL is a trojan that phones home back to Microsoft.

Windows Defender cannot detect 75% of the viruses on the Internet, I wonder how well Morro will do? Most likely as secure as using a rubber band instead of a combination lock to make sure nobody breaks into your locker? :)

[M_Ehsan]

I believe Microsoft is doing a fine job and I must confirm that I am a good user of software produced by Microsoft. The decision of Microsoft to provide antivirus software will give us a real peace of mind. Today I had a great difficulty to instal Norton Internet Security 2008, for it failed allowing me to instal due to traces of early versions of Symantec. I was searching Internet to locate a suitable antvirus and I came across that good news by Microsoft.
Thank you,
M_Ehsan

[TrioBrothers]

Hmm...

I wonder who is gonna trust Microsoft when it comes to security applications eh?

Personally speaking, I used Windows because its the far easiest and most supportive. Why? Many others are still Windows users. So when you faced an issue, some others could have faced it too and resolves should have been made by the time the problem hits you, or at best, you solve it and share with the rests. Isn't that great?

I wondered what's up with Microsoft mindset. Many have switched from IE to alternatives. Reason being; IE has had security problems with ActiveX supposedly to promote better web experience and ease lots of operations (installations is one of it; 'We welcome you, malwares. Please automatically install when I allow you to'). Sadly, I am so frustrated when IE 5.5 came. Then 6. Then now 7. My goodness. It only seem to be more 'user friendly' but still a memory hogger and security issues never failed to settle down nicely. And guess what? The cache/cookies cleaner still didn't work well, till I gave up and use Privacy Mantra to clear things out.

Then somewhere before IE 7 came Windows Defender. I find that this software is such a joke. Automatically installs via update, then seems uselessly running as AVG antivirus seems to be picking a lot more garbage then what Windows Defender managed to detect. Scan was amazingly long too. Great, after 24hours having the program in my system it was out and guess what's left behind? Corrupted files unable to be removed... related to Windows Defender. And now its 'definition files' are in my Add/Remove lists... What a Heavens!

[sting7k]

How it going to use even fewer resources than OneCare? The total OneCare usage in the background is only ~20MB of RAM and almost no CPU usage. Pretty lite already.

[Web Hero]

I've noticed that Microsoft has "dropped" products quite a bit in the last 5 years. I've ran into websites that have been "closed" down, etc. I'm a OneCare subscriber (expires Feburary) and actually think it's the best hands-off offering I've used. Love the automated tune-up, back-up, and of course antivirus/spamware protection. It's too bad they won't offer it still with Morro. Will Family OneCare protection for web browsing go too? Dang.