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They *arent* stopping the need for this software, just making it harder for the competition.

Windows OneCare is not built into Windows Vista and must be bought seperatly. You can thank Symantec for that. The only thing that is integrated into Vista is Windows Defender, which the AV companies will probably sue MS over, and I can bet that both OneCare and Defender use the same protocol that MS is telling the AV vendors to use.

As For The Competition that MS is trying to "Screw"...
Trend Micro runs on Vista
Computer Associates runs on Vista
Avast runs on Vista
Sophos Runs on Vista
AVG Runs on Vista
Mcafee runs on vista
Symantec runs on vista

all other security vendors won't be able to run properly.

Trend Micro runs on Vista
Computer associates runs on Vista
Avast runs on Vista
AVG Runs on Vista
Mcafee runs on vista
Hell, Symantec runs on vista

Its funny, Microsoft advertises a free 1 year subscription to eTrust antivirus from CA on their own site

You think they'll keep doing that now? (eTrust bets OneCare by miles, imho)

You might also look at CA's eTrust antivirus. It's free for a year by going here: http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/ It's an active scanner, is light on the system resources and is backed by a fairly large company. It's essentially a commercial product that they're giving away. I use and recommend it.

At my company, we've had at least two virus infections before definitions were released. We worked through symptoms and used stuff like HijackThis! and Process Explorer to find out what was going on, plus a few of the PS Tools to get rid of it and Bart's PE to clean-room the system to remove persistent files. It took our virus vendor a week to come up with definitions, but a few others had them earlier and we could use their online or free versions to clean the systems.

Generally, when we get a suspicious file, it goes to VirusTotal first. If any of the 20-or-so listed AV vendors have a definition for the virus, you can usually find some information about it (at least a name) and from there figure out how to clean it. If nobody has a definition, next stop is Norman Sandbox to figure out what the beastie does, at least from a high-level point of view. If nothing else, it will probably give you a mutex that you can create to block execution/further infection, and sometimes it even gives you a clue as to what the virus would be or if it's a variant of something else. I found that we had a new variant of W32/Sality based on its mutex, which was one version number incremented from the info available online.

If there are no hits after that, there are some more things you can try, but they're mostly shots in the dark. Unless you can un-UPX the file and do some serious reverse-engineering on your own, you probably have to wait for a definition or post your symptoms in a newsgroup or forum and hope someone can help.

One good thing about VirusTotal is that it submits your sample to AV vendors (if you give it permission) so they are alerted and can start to develop definitions. It's difficult to find contact info for some vendors, but McAfee, ClamAV, CA and others have places you can submit a sample, you would do well to try them all if you have non-sensitive information in an infected file.

I have to respond. The parent was correct. It's amazing seeing what people do to run windows, and what I've had to do in the past.

You say you seriously doubt anyone has done a fresh install of distro-of-choice and not spent time tweaking things to get the system fully usable. Then you go on to say you're hoping to build your first linux box.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, depending on what distro you choose. Someone below mentioned OpenBSD, and that's a good recommendation. I think you'll find that a fair amount of the unix-y environments start you off at a solid base, and allow you to build up. This is in contrast to whenever I have the (in my opinion, of course) displeasure of dealing with a windows install, where I have to tear down and build up.

No, not all distro's are the same. Sometimes they have annoying services listening on all interfaces, like cups or lprd. That's one of the reasons why OpenBSD is nice. It starts you off with a good base from which to build up. I have recently switched to the excellent ubuntu distrobution from debian sarge. I am pleasantly surprised by the fact that very few services are listening by default, so there's really not all that much to do to "secure" the box (at least from a basic point of view). In fact, when I installed ubuntu over debian, I kept my old home directory, so there was no tweaking to get my desktop how I want it. I guess you could do the same with windows, but it's a pain to mess around with the registry to point to a different location/drive for user's home folders. All I have to do is mount the old volume as /home and it works fine.

Not only that, but the installation of new software is tremendously easier for the unix-y domain, at least debian, where apt-get is very good at solving your problems. No cds to look for, no keys to look for, makes it all very easy. So I think you're making a kind of incorrect blanket statement based on your experience with windows (it seems).

That said, I prefer the old tiny personal firewall, but only the old version (2 or 3?) as the new one doesn't have as nice an interface. It seems to barf a fair amount when installed on XP, so I'm actually shying away from that these days. You didn't say which version of windows you're using. I've been using the virus scanner from etrust, free to valid microsoft users: ezarmor. It seems to work okay, and it's free. It also includes a firewall of sorts, but I don't recall being very impressed, so I installed tpf again. AV gets rather expensive, rather quickly. I purchased the symantec AV/Firewall suite for something like $50. As always, there's a linux NAT box protecting it all, allowing easy port forwarding. I've also used the linksys wrt54g and it seems to work okay. It's available pretty cheaply now, and allowed me to reduce the number of crud that clutters up the gf's apartment.

Anyway, I wish you luck with your new linux box, and I think (once you get used to it) you'll find it pleasantly surprising.

Where's the rating for speed and UI?

As for the other issues, not all of them are relevant. "Skinning"? Whoopee. "Sidebar support"? Hmmm, isn't that a Mozilla unique feature? Why not add a "feature": "Is named Mozilla?".

Seriously, though, through the power of Proxomitron and Cookie Cop I get more configurability than I know what to do with. Throw in POPFile and I've got the power, baby. As for security I've never had a virus, never been hacked, never had any problems. I keep my stuff patched, run a good cheap virus scanner and, oh yeah, use common sense.

While I will agree that a law like this would allow software manufacturers a new way to loom over users, what I fear more is the virus detection industry. If I am liable for the spead of a virus, then I had better buy a copy of some anti-virus software, and then pay the company what ever they charge to get the updates. As much as I fear Microsoft abusing the rules, I also fear companies like Computer Associates and Network Associates abusing customers directly because we are afraid of being sued.

I used to think this way, but then I got nailed.

I think it was by some obscure virus on our network. I might have double-clicked some random file and got hit. My bad, but it still sucked.

I dunno, you can probably get virus protection for free or cheap. I love Norton AV. It sucks major system resources, but it works hella well. eTrust seems to be good and quite cheap, and uses less resources. Not sure it's quite as effective though.

You could always try KaZaA and search for an AV program for free too.

if this is such a great product, why can't i just upgrade to the e-trust version they are offering now? It has the same charm as InoculateIT, and the price is a little less than $10 each year.

eTrust Antivirus ($19.95, $9.95 annual renewel) will give you what InoculateIT Personal Edition did. eTrust EZArmor ($49.95, $19.95 annual renewel) is a broader package providing the features of their Antivirus, Personal Firewall and Content Inspection offerings. I haven't worked with EZArmor, yet, but I've used Inoculan, InoculateIT and eTrust Antivirus, liked them all (and the improvements made over the years) and expect good things from Armor.

if this is such a great product, why can't i just upgrade to the e-trust version they are offering now? It has the same charm as InoculateIT, and the price is a little less than $10 each year.

eTrust Antivirus ($19.95, $9.95 annual renewel) will give you what InoculateIT Personal Edition did. eTrust EZArmor ($49.95, $19.95 annual renewel) is a broader package providing the features of their Antivirus, Personal Firewall and Content Inspection offerings. I haven't worked with EZArmor, yet, but I've used Inoculan, InoculateIT and eTrust Antivirus, liked them all (and the improvements made over the years) and expect good things from Armor.