Re: Without prejudice, but OneCare sucks big time

i too have noticed a extremly decrease in quality and security in microsoft
products and am thinking of switching to a different OS i have considered
Mac( Apple ), Linux ( Linus Torvasqui or something like that ), Unix, and
the extremely eligible, BartPe (http://www.nu2.nu/ ) almost made my
desission one problem available software :-(

---
Brian M

"akita" <akita@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5D9C24BE-3F9C-45F7-8603-3F1E77E45301@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Without prejudice, but OneCare sucks big time - and yes, I do realise it's
a
beta. I'm using the Vista Ultimate RTM release, and OneCare could not
detect
(let alone combat) one virus and one Trojan on our testbed system. OneCare's
tuning option removes files nilly-wily without letting the user know what
it
removed. Turned out it removed system files needed by other software to
run!
OneCare's firewall (which replaces the Vista firewall) is even less
dependable / customizable, even though it offers full bothy-way protection
out of the box. OneCare's insistence on having Automatic Updates turned on
is
also rather annoying; after all the user should have the option whether
s/he
wants that feature or not - and a lot of people do not want to be alerted
on
a daily basis about some minor crappy updates that do little, if anything,
to
improve performance or security!

Microsoft really needs to rethink its strategy and approach to all aspects
of security as a matter of priority. By attempting to block third-party
vendors from supplying solid, reliable security software, Microsoft leaves
Vista wide open to code hackers and other malware suppliers. Quite
frankly,
Microsoft's reputation for delivering reliable and trustworthy security
applications is at best very, very low! Until people can trust Vista,
Vista
sales will be slower than a snail on speed!

Personally, I am running Vista Ultimate with Nod32 for anti virus
protection, and make the most out of the inbuilt firewall, which - with a
bit
of tuning - is well capable of monitoring and preventing traffic in both
directions. A little free utility called "Vista Firewall Control" from
Castlecops helps tremendously in that task.

But make no mistake, as soon as other software vendors have managed to
release reliable security software products for Vista (Agnitum, Kaspersky,
AVG et al) I will definitely employ one of their firewall products,
dumping
Microsoft's Defender and firewall for good! Unfortunately Trend Micro's
beta
security package expires on 31-12-2006. Though very capable, it was a
massive
resource hog (+/-170MB) and did not allow any other antivirus program on
the
system, which I frankly find rather off putting!

On a final note, I find Microsoft's behaviour utterly disgraceful. Vista
is
definitely a nice step up, but Microsoft's blatant attempt of trying to
corner the security market is not only anti-competitive, but almost
criminal,
given Microsoft's poorer then poor history of OS security!

Let's hope justice will be served in a similar manner as when Microsoft
was
told to refrain from forcing people to use just their browser, just their
media player and so on!!!



.

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