Microsoft Launches Anti-Virus Public Beta

Chris Gondek writes "The Register has a story reporting that Microsoft has released a free beta of its upcoming anti-virus application. According to Microsoft, the new anti-virus application known as Windows OneCare Live is 'like taking your PC in for a tune up at the service station'. Microsoft announced in May that it would be releasing an anti-virus application based on software developed by GeCad, a Romanian anti-virus company that Microsoft purchased several years ago." More details from InformationWeek.

Comments

Re:How long ...

[this great guy]

Has already happened, happens often, and will happen again, in many anti virus products, including MS's.

Re:Screw Symantec

[plover]

Agreed! Norton AV has been the single largest generator of BSODs I've encountered. While it's been mostly stable since XP, it's still a huge slow-ya-down pig.

One thing I've done to improve performance is to restrict the files it looks at to executables (and some of the more annoying scripting languages.) I still let it perform a weekly full scan on everything, but I don't real-time examine every picture or MP3. Yes, I realize I might get bit by a JPEG-delivered-virus because I'm not scanning .JPGs. But using anti-virus software doesn't mean I immediately start downloading crap from every .ru address out there anyway. I'm still mostly careful, use Firefox, disable most plugins, and keep other stuff patched.

Re:So what happens when...

[plover]

It removes the "rootkit" but does not remove the DRM that the rootkit was installed to hide. The DRM is still there to restrict you to three copies. If you have their DRMware and want to get rid of it, go to sunncomm.com and click on their uninstaller.

Re:Ripping off Google again

[Cylix]

I've been looking the underdogs for a while.

I was running with AVG for a bit, but it's ability to repair infected files fell considerably short when compared to Norton. AVG was pretty much like taking a step back technology wise, but at least it was light weight.

I started picking through several freely available AV products not too long ago and came across aVast.

It has an excellent feature set and definately is on par with the big hitters in the industry. HTTP, POP, Imap, NNTP, ICQ, Outlook and Yahoo support. I think I missed some. It also features advanced file recovery.

Anyhow, that sounds like an ad, but I was trying to spit out the feature set as quickly as possible. I missed more then a few things, but I'm not trying to write a review.

My problem lately with the norton products is bloat and simply running dog ass slow even on newer computers. So, try aVast for a day (free for personal use) and see how you like it. (Sorry AVG, I can no longer pimp you, except where resources are very limited)