Window One Care Live

I just heard about this new product that Microsoft is rolling out. At the moment, it is still free and open to beta testing. From what i hear, they will plan to roll out around June, at a price of $50 per 3 pc's.

So what is this One Care ? A new centralized medical plan? Essentially, YES...for your computer that is. This is what One Care promises:

• anti virus
• anti spyware
• firewall
• backup
• system tune-ups

Sounds interesting doesnt it. But Microsoft's partners, notable Symantec and McAfee might feel a 'wee' bit threatened by the giants latest offering. If it takes off, the Antivirus vendors might see their dominance in the anti-virus sector challenged by their biggest partner. The bigger your partners are, the harder they crush you? Corny you say, but Symantec and McAfee arent laughing.

On the flip side, no one really trusts Microsoft these days. I'm betting this software is going to be full of holes. In all likely hood, it will probably become more of a security risk than a product that is supposed to improve security. Just last week, i read that security analyst took about 15 minutes to discover a vulnerability in the IE7 beta. In defence of Microsoft, it's just a beta.

FYI, i did review the installation requirements, and what caught by eye was that it requires at least 550MB on the system partition. Utter nonsense. I think i'll just stick to my DIY One Care live, which is :

• Zone Alarm (firewall)
• AVG Anti Virus (antivirus)
• SpyBot Search & Destroy (antispyware)
• Microsoft Antispyware (duh...antispyware).

And i dont need 550MB to do this.