Microsoft's Free AV App May Be a Non-Starter

CWmike writes "Microsoft is preparing to launch a public beta of Morro, the free anti-malware it announced last November, according to reports. Morro will use the same scanning engine as Windows Live OneCare, the software that the free software will replace and Microsoft's first consumer-grade antivirus package. OneCare is to get the boot as of June 30 (along with finance app Microsoft Money). John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner, has questioned whether users would step up to Morro even if it was free. 'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,' he said. 'Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50." Would you buy it?' Not surprisingly, competitors have dismissed Morro's threat to their business. 'We like our chances,' Todd Gebhart, vice president in charge of McAfee's consumer line, said when it was announced OneCare was a goner. 'Consumers have already rejected OneCare,' added Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer software at Symantec. 'Making that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation.'"

Comments

Re:As long as..

[Zxarr]

Avast Antivirus is pretty good too. It's free, but you need to register yearly.

Bad analogy

[recoiledsnake]

'Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50."

I think that analogy is broken. Very few malware use the holes in MS software these days. Most of the viruses spread by user error, email, IM, flaws in Flash/Acrobat etc. MS is offering a service to clean them up and does provide free fixes for bugs in their software. Obligatory car analogy, car company sells insurance for breakins and accidents and charges extra. Why not pay for it if the deal is good?

Re:Am I missing something?

[donatzsky]

Try one of these:
http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-the-Popup-Ads-in-Avira-Antivir
http://www.tipsfor.us/2007/08/15/make-avira-antivir-free-edition-more-usable/

Microsoft's disjointed AntiVirus strategy

[Gary W. Longsine]

Microsoft has, for years, maintained three separate tools in this space (that I know of, there might be others). They change the names of them periodically, to confuse their hapless victims.

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool
You gotta read this page. They release a new version every month. It apparently cannot remove viruses which are not actively running. Why is this tool not built in to Microsoft Windows Defender?

Windows Live One Care
This link shows a forum moderator, chastising a poor infested user for asking a question about a different Microsoft antivirus product -- Microsoft Windows Defender. Why are these separate products, again?

Microsoft Windows Defender
Formerly known as Microsoft AntiSpyware.

These should be one product. The fact that Microsoft maintains three separate products to deal with this problem is, itself, an indication of a very serious ongoing problem at Microsoft. As a company, they still don't take this seriously.

Re:Microsoft's disjointed AntiVirus strategy

[Z34107]

The "Malicious Software Removal Tool" is pushed through Windows Update. It's not meant to be a full-blown virus scanner, just an install script that will neuter a few of this month's viruses. It's created for the computer illiterates with no virus scanner in the hopes that they left Automatic Updates on.

Windows Defender was supposed to be a very basic, lightweight application to provide some warning that you're infected It's part of Windows Vista, installable on Windows XP, and has some nifty functions that fall between msconfig and HijackThis. I can't speak to it's detection rate, but our help desk has gotten a few calls from people who didn't realize they were infected until Windows Defender told them so.

Windows Live OneCare was their attempt at competing with Symantec or Network Associates. They bought the basic engine from some other company, saw that the entire thing was written in VB 6, facepalmed, and rewrote it as OneCare. It also helps with remote backups and whatnot.

They really shouldn't be all one product, as they serve completely different purposes. Although if they made Windows Defender a bit more powerful, they'd have an uninstallable version of Live Care.