Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the not-so-great-expectations dept.

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.

5 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It'll get better over time by Gothmolly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How many times have we heard this from Microsoft? Why do people still reward this sort of behavior with continued purchases? If its going to kind of suck out of the box, and get better over time, and you can get support, why not use RedHat Linux or Solaris ?

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  2. Old Viruses by Subbynet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have always had a problem with these "stats".

    If Microsoft know 50% (for example) of viruses are so old and won't run on 2000/XP, and they then decide not to search for them during AV tests... Does that mean the AV missed it - or quite rightly the code is so old that MS no longer considered a threat?

    --
    Mega Mobiles www.megamobiles.co.uk
  3. No love for open source, ClamAV by HTMLSpinnr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's no mention of ClamAV's performance in these tests. Granted, it probably isn't designed to be as "complete" as some of the other packages noted, it'd be interesting to see how it fares for those of us who use it on mail gateways and servers.

    Besides, it'd have to be better than Microsoft's OneCare!

    --
    $ man woman *
    -bash: /usr/bin/man: Argument list too long
    1. Re:No love for open source, ClamAV by Southpaw018 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To back up what RootWind said, here's the official reply (on ClamWin, which is pretty much a Win32 compile + gui for ClamAV):

      ClamWin better than Norton? No, you can not look at number of signatures to know who detects more. If you look on how ClamAV performs in independent tests (e.g. AV-Test.de) you see that it score around 49%, while Norton 99% (I would get very similar results). ClamAV is good to use e.g. at mail servers, but I would not suggets to use for other places, as there are better options available.

      link

      --
      ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
  4. It actually wasn't "good enough" by RootWind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The software has to detect 85% or more to be considered for the on-demand test. MS OneCare was only included for the first time most likely due to the reputation of the former RAV. OneCare will be dropped from the test if they don't improve to 85%.