Slashdot Mirror
Review of Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Tools
happyslayer writes "Matthew Fordahl has written a review of Microsoft's anti-spyware tool and has declared it, in a word, 'ineffective.' Though the methodology isn't carried out completely (he uses another anti-virus program after trying MS's tool, but doesn't do the same with the anti-spyware tool), it's a fairly good anecdote on the MS product's usefulness."
Oxymoron?
I'm sure in this thread we'll see those who say how they hate it or love it, and then someone will mention firefox. Does it ever end?
It's Groundhog Day on slashdot.
Some of you that do like it will change your mind when you learn that Microsoft Anti-Spyware was written in VISUAL BASIC 6.0 (here comes more bloatware comments)
I'm sure those people will change their mind just to conform so they can find a spot on the Slashdot bandwagon along with the firefox fanboys that hate Visual Basic and Microsoft.
Let's just bash everything Microsoft makes. Better yet, let's bash the BETAS that Microsoft is publishing.
Longhorn:
I installed this piece of crap on my laptop. It didn't ask if I wanted to keep my linux partitions, it juts made me delete them. The default wallpaper is stupid, and how many users know to right click the desktop to change it? Also, the Win95 drivers shipped with my laptop don't work in Longhorn. And it keeps telling me about this "beta" thing that I supposedly installed. It's really slow on my PII-400.
WUS:
This thing requires an OS preinstalled. A WINDOWS OS. It requires IIS and IE installed. It doesn't deploy linux patches. Don't bother switching from yum to WUS, it's not going to work. It's still using that femmy blue theme.
What do you people want? Oh that's right, we want to see Microsoft fall flat on their face. Never fear, this is the probable cycle:
* MS buys technology
* MS repackages technology
* MS publishes betas and eventually ver 1.0
* Slashdot crowd gets nervous, posts negative reviews only.
* ver 1.0 is halfway decent
* MS decides to add "features"
* ver 2.0 ships. Twice as big as ver 1.0, and where are these alleged features?
* MS decides it should send mail (Zawinski's law)
* ver 3.0 ships. It sends e-mail now, but still puzzles users as to why they upgraded from ver 1.0
* ver 4.0 ships as an e-mail client, and no one remembers what the product was actually supposed to do
* ver 5.0 ships. It no longer sends mail or does what it originally did. Users await ver 6.0
* Product is EOL'd
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Having spent two days disinfecting the system, I broke down and reformatted the hard drive. I then reinstalled Windows XP and all its patches.
It took just 90 minutes.
Not reformatting the hard drive would have been faster, and he wouldn't have lost any data.
Please forgive me if any of this has been mentioned, there's just some times I can't read through all the comments, ok a lot of times I can't read through all the comments.
Anyone who thinks Microsoft's (Giant's) antispyware software is ineffective has not looked at it from all perspectives. Take on the role of an affiliate marketer, and you would applaud this software.
Being an affiliate marketer, and solely relying on affiliate marketing and affiliate commissions to live, this software attacks and removes many known adware/spyware/parasiteware programs that hijack efforts by affiliate marketers (180solutions/Zango/, Gator/Claria and many more). Not only does it attack these parasites, it attacks and remove many browser hijackers and other known BHOs (CoolWebSearch and the like). Such programs install themselves on internet users computers and, if that computer user clicks throug a legitimate affiliate link, these programs hijack the links and redirect the user through their own affiliate link, thus screwing the legitimate affiliate out of making money. Some may not care, but browse the web and see how many affiliates there are out there.
Not to mention, Matthew Fordahl is reviewing and criticizing BETA software. Gee, think something may not work right? Get a clue. Put yourself in another person's shoes and Microsoft's AntiSpyware tool is a treasure. A long time Ad-Aware user, it has now gone to 2nd-place in my array of tools. And as an affiliate marketer, I'm among MANY (that's a high count, by the way) that absolutely love this software.
Sure, it may not get every single thing on the Internet, but it's attacking many common parasites and it's causing illegitimate affiliate marketers a lot of headaches. And again, it's only Beta.