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Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "PC World has a story reporting that Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare came in dead last out of a group of 17 antivirus programs tested against hundreds of thousands of pieces of malware. The report of an Austrian antivirus researcher was released at the AV Comparatives Web site this week. Several free AV products were included in the test as well." While the top dog was able to find 99.5% of the malicious code, OneCare clocked in at 82.4%. Of course, there's no metric for the severity of the malware in the 17% gap.
Just because a virus won't run doesn't mean it should be dismissed. Any machine can still be a vector of transmission for viruses that will infect others. Think about the AV products for Linux or Mac. Most of them clean Windows viruses out of files/emails so that they won't infect other machines, not because they want to protect themselves.
"We are looking closely at the methodology and results of the test to ensure that Windows Live OneCare performs better in future tests," a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Thats the danger with tests like this. Companies like MS see them and instead of thinking "how can we use this data to make our product better?" they are focused on just making it look better for the test. I'm not trying to single MS out here, video card manufacturers do this sort of thing all the time, hell it may be that the top performers on this test did it too.
Incidentally, why all the MS hate? Why focus on the company on the bottom, if it was any other company the headline would have been "Norton at top of antivirus heap in tests". The companies at the top are much bigger in this area and their software more widely deployed so I would think their performance would be more relevent regardless of who scored where.
The only people who give a crap about OneCare coming in "last" are idiots who have nothing better to do than bitch and moan and laugh at Microsoft.
A good news story would be about who came in *first* in these tests. You know, information that actually might be useful to people. But that wouldnt get nearly as many page hits, I suspect.
Its not that they should care about Macs or Linux, but one would think they would care about older versions of Windows.
The reasons are the same that Mac antivirus programs strip out windows viruses, and viruses from as far back as OS 6. Just because it cannot infect this system, does not mean it is not a threat in general.
Besides, what evidence do you have that what they missed were older viruses? While I admit this is a valid hypothesis, I see no evidence for it one way or another.
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Because Best Buy, Fry's, Circuit City, Dell, and any other retailer that matters don't have a demo unit setup nor do they advertise that is is sold.
Don't give me this BS that Dell offers Linux because if it isn't here, it doesn't exist.
I'm about as anti-MS as one can get but I also reailze their importance in the marketplace.
MS is obviously crippling 3rd party malware protection yet their own package fails to make the mark even though they have the advantage.
I've consistently said that MS has crappy programmers and this proves it. That comment is not an attack on the employees but a dig at the finished product which is a reflection on the programmers.
The individuals who program may have talent but when it comes to the committee that puts it all together, it's a mish mash of crap.
I setup an OEM Vista installation last week which was my first exposure to Vista.
Is it better than XP SP2? Didn't seem so to me.
Visually appealing theme wise? I think so. Much better than the default XP theme.
I didn't get all those annoying permission popups when trying to create and delete files that was reported earlier. The popups I did get I didn't feel like it was an intrusion as I didn't get too many unless I was trying to install something.
With 2Gigs of ram, it did seem to perform slower than XP SP2 with 512MB of ram. Wow. That's the perception that matters to the end user too.
What's wrong with Vista is that it's too wordy.
The security center is too confusing for the end user and too wordy.
The popups are too wordy and not intuitively selectable. You get 2 or so choices on popups that don't appear to be decision making selections yet it is asking a question and awaiting an answer.
The other thing that really never bothered me before but Vista does it wrong (on my first impression) is the left-mouse/right-mouse selections.
I don't remember exactly but I was trying to look at network properties or something like that and double left click was different than right click > properties. Much different than XP and before.
What I remember was that what I wanted didn't happen when I selected it making me to have to remember how to get the proper properties of a particular object.
At that moment I finally realized why the Mac had only 1 button on their mouse.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
So what you're actually saying is that nothing is an alternative to Windows for Joe and Jane Average Computer user, not just Linux. Which makes me wonder: how did people start using Windows? Weren't they too used to not using Windows to "relearn"? How did people learn to use cellphones, or to use number pads instead of dials before that? People don't stick with what they know, they stick with what everyone else uses and/or tells them to use. There is a difference.
If your businessplan relies on the failure of an other party you have no right to complain when said party finally manages to reduce their failures.
I think it's the first point where you're off... Microsoft gets slammed for having a buggy OS and insecurity software that make virus propegation easy. Adding anti-virus software has never been a good solution... it's just a band-aid.
These tests only report how well the AV software detects viruses etc. Not how bloated the AV sofware is, nor how much it clogs up the rest of your machine's workings.
Sorry to hit you again with the GP's point, but why should they care about older versions of Windows? Doesn't that undermine the get-your-new-shiny-omg-pretty-colors-OS-same-as-be fore-but-with-round-corners philosophy?
We hear every day about MS dropping support from old OS's (something I would stand for, as long as those systems weren't as fucking widely used as W2K is); infecting them and not Vista/XP/Whatever makes the latter look more secure (and as Windows users go, they only way to move).
Feel free to bash me anyway you want, I was only playing Devil's advocate here.
My 0.02 cents
It depends.
If you just use them to scan executables/emails before opening anything, for that an older one with up to date signatures should do fine.
But the old engines tend to lack defenses against 0wnage of the system via different holes. Major reason why new AV clients are so heavy on the system is because they actively try to stop any 'nasty' stuff from happening to the system - even against unknown threats using heuristics.
Older AV software also does not usually do anything against spyware and other crapware.
I've worked in PC repair, and its highly common to see systems with outdated AV software throughly owned by some spyware/adware, disabling the AV software (it would still fetch updates and claim all was well, but it would not do anything in reality), and it's not uncommon to find bunch of viruses in such cases as well.
If your system can't run a modern AV software (I recommend F-Secure, it's pretty lightweight for what it does), either upgrade your system, pull the network cable, or stop using Windows.
But MS are not fixing the actual problem, they are just selling their own bandaid addon like other companies have been doing for years, only theirs is inferior to the ones already available.
This can only be bad for the consumer... MS now have a conflict of interest between improving the security of windows, or leaving it poor to encourage sales of onecare... Their product will also end up widely used despite the lack of quality, it will sell just like every other MS product simply because it gets pushed along with sales of window/office. The sales reps will start offering discounts against windows/office if they take onecare too, and the customers will consider it pointless to have 2 antivirus products and won't bother buying a third party one anymore.
Once all the other AV vendors are out of business, and all windows users are running onecare or nothing, the malware will have a much easier time of it because malware authors will now have a single known target.
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As OS tasks shift to the Web (and I think that will happen), we'll see a shift to the more stable Linux OS because the casual user won't have to figure out why their computer "has roots" (or whatever...)
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I'd like to know which of the highly rated products won't "Norton" the performance of my system... My ideal AV would be lean as well as mean. Who in their right mind wants a 99% sol'n that halves the performance of their system?