Microsoft Admits to Serious Problems with OneCare

ZDOne writes "A ZDNet reporter has gotten some truly amazing quotes out of a Microsoft product manager about the troubled OneCare product. Arno Edelmann, Microsoft's European business security product manager, was flagged down at this week's CeBit event, and had this to say about the service: 'Usually Microsoft doesn't develop products, we buy products. It's not a bad product, but bits and pieces are missing ... OneCare is a new product — they shouldn't have rolled it out when they did, but they're fixing the problems now.' The problem is apparently with the the GeCAD antivirus code, which has had problems harmonizing with the company's Exchange updates. While Exchange 2007 doesn't cause issues, users with older versions may see their email quarantined as a matter of course."

Comments

Microsoft makes users do beta testing now?

[qwijibo]

How is this different from practically every other software company? Sure, it would be nice if users weren't the beta testers, but this isn't exactly a new tactic. This has been going on for at least 20 years. I just can't attest to having direct professional experience with the tactic prior to that.

Hitting aggressive(unrealistic) deadlines has always taken priority over testing or finishing products prior to the release.

Re:Microsoft makes users do beta testing now?

[MightyMartian]

I'm afraid you're right. In the olden days of software, money was made off of support contracts, and new version and new feature rollouts were relatively scarce. The whole purpose of software was so that some big guy in a suit could charge big dollars to maintain the system.

When that business cycle was finally toppled in favor of the "new feature every year, new version every three or four", pulling more of a company's revenue into the software itself, the necessity came to pump out new stuff with as much frequency as possible, or at least to keep promising new features even when the product didn't actually exist. MS really started doing it with Chicago, putting out artists' renditions of screen layouts in friendly mags, still missing deadlines, and ultimately coming out with a terrible product (remember for the first 32-bit version of Office... which wasn't really 32-bit at all).

Microsoft's AV software, which had the AV community flipping out thinking they were screwed, has turned into one of the company's biggest embarassments. But it's not the only one. Vista incompatibilities are a serious headache, and a lot of folks just aren't upgrading. With the US economy looking like it's going into downturn, they're not going to be making up for it in OEM boxes.

I'm sure they'll survive this time, but the business model they're running with is showing cracks. I'll wager the other AV guys like Symantec are rolling around on the floor laughing at this, while MS's reputation at being able to manage the viruses that are taking advantage of the vulnerabilities largely of their its own creation is going down the tubes.

There is also no 64-bit support

[benzapp]

It's quite amusing when a person installs Vista 64-bit edition, and is prompted to install an antivirus product like OneCare. There is a link to the site right on startup where you can order. It actually lets you purchase it and everything, then you go to install it - and it tells you it's on an unsupported platform.

Whoever runs the OneCare group should be fired!

Re:You see that is the MS Advantage.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I started at my current job, at a startup, they had WYSE terminals connected to a Windows Terminal Server. We were growing fast, and I was in a position to decide what technology we would deploy moving forward. I wasn't going to be personally responsible for Windows (they can't pay me enough) so I standardized on Ubuntu Linux on cheap desktop machines.

We ran like that for a year. Many of the people (especially the sales folks) would constantly complain about problems. Problems that would mysteriously vanish when I was looking. Things like "I don't know where I put such-and-such a file."

Then the real company leadership, who had all been busy with another project, came in. Literally overnight, they decided that we would replace all the linux desktops with Windows. Fortunately at this point we had several junior techs that could do the job. And did.

I now have the only Linux desktop at the company. The windows machines have constant problems -- (I can't read my email! I can't log into the domain! etc...) BUT -- the important thing here is, no one complains. When there are constant problems now, it's not about how much the system sucks. It's just the way things are. Whereas on Linux, it was Linux's fault.

I'm personally convinced that there are far more problems on the Windows installs than there ever were on the Linux installs. The other techs who have more involvement in the desktops these days agree. But it doesn't matter, because Windows is the standard, any problems are also the standard.

Screw 'em. I'm just glad it's not MY responsibility. And no, I didn't get demoted or fired, I got promoted out of having to deal with office matters. Now I just work on the production systems, which are 100% open-source based.

Re:You see that is the MS Advantage.

[Master of Transhuman]

I have to admit that while I believe Linux can be used to replaced Windows in a corporate environment, the REAL issue is precisely this sort of human relations problem.

It could be that when you put the initial Linux solution in, there wasn't enough "prep" of the users. So ANY change would have been resisted, not just Linux.

You get taught this in decent system analysis classes - the "user prep" is critical to making ANY IT change work.

I changed the user accounts on the machines of one of my clients from administrator to limited as the start of a basic security hardening. I explained to the users that this was a basic necessity - never run as administrator. The users complained they have to switch to administrator too often to run like this. Even after I pointed out the "runas" command, they still had complaints. They viewed their machines as if they were home machines, not corporate machines attached to a network. They couldn't see that running as administrator, while easier from a production standpoint, was a threat to the entire network and that if a virus got in, it could drop the whole network - a serious production impediment.

Finally, I had to switch them back to administrator mode. They were attaching customer hard drives to their machines (to convert customer video files) and the NTFS wouldn't allow anybody but administrator to access the drives. The files on the drives were owned by an SID which was not recognized by the host system. On XP Pro, you could change the permissions to give the Everyone account full control of those drives - but half their machines run XP Home (and the owner doesn't want to spend money upgrading them to Pro.) On Home you have to go into Safe Mode to access the system Administrator account (or use a command line tool) - which is way too much work. Even my admin-level account can't do it in XP Home. I considered having them take ownership - which could be done from my admin account - but the problem with that is that when the drives are returned to the customer, then the customer wouldn't be able to access them. Having the Everyone account have full control would have been an acceptable compromise, but isn't feasible under XP Home because of the need to do it from Safe Mode.

You just can't win. There are just too many mistakes compounded on other mistakes in the typical business environment.

More brilliant ideas on security from Microsoft

[Master of Transhuman]

Microsoft security guru wants Vista bugs rated less serious

Any more questions?