Windows Live OneCare review

Both Symantec and McAfee are preparing to enter the centrally managed online security service market with their Norton 360 and Falcon products respectively. However, they've been beaten to the punch by Microsoft. Windows OneCare Live is currently available to US residents only; a Microsoft spokesperson told us "Microsoft plans to begin rolling out the service to worldwide and international customers within the next 12 months. However, we have no additional details to share at this time." Thankfully, this is relatively easy to bypass by using a PC running a US-EN version of Windows XP SP 2 when downloading the software.

OneCare is targeted squarely at the consumer; everything from the simplistic install, basic control panel and lack of advanced configuration options reinforces this. Even the licensing - which covers up to three computers for a year, including automatic signature updates and software upgrades - is aimed to appeal to the family. This is no bad thing, as long as you appreciate that you won't be getting the configurable power or advanced features of the leading, established security suites.

What you do get is something that runs almost entirely in the background, with minimal user prompting; even the new two-way firewall is remarkably quiet, just getting on with the job courtesy of the well-populated application rules database. The anti-virus module, based upon the RAV product acquired by Microsoft in 2003, is capable enough in providing background virus monitoring, with no trouble passing a round of our basic virus zoo tests.

The final part of the "protection plus" section is spyware monitoring courtesy of Windows Defender Beta 2 - the only beta application in the OneCare suite, and the only one to run as a separate application. As well as real-time protection, which monitors spyware system entry points, there's a double whammy of automatic update definitions provided by Microsoft's own research unit and the collective SpyNet community pool. There's also an integrated "software explorer" that monitors running system processes in a far more accessible way than the default Windows Task Manager, although there isn't much in the way of advice as to what the processes are.

But what really matters with a spyware scanner are results. We've put the ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 6.5 results in parenthesis to illustrate just how far behind Windows Defender fell when exposed to our spyware-ridden machines: detection rate 82% (96%), removal rate 81% (91%) and blocking rate 60% (77%). This provides an overall accuracy rating of 74%, compared to the 88% of the A-Listed ZoneAlarm suite. It's also some way behind the 89% of the A-Listed standalone Spyware Doctor.

Move to the "performance plus" section and you'll find system tune-up, scheduled to run every month. This will do all the basic housekeeping tasks in the background, defragment your hard drives, remove temporary files, check for system updates and perform a full virus scan. It's all nice and tidy, but not anything even moderately experienced users can't do with a few clicks.

The included backup tool is an improvement over the basic Windows version though, with its biggest asset being the ability to schedule automatic incremental backups to an external drive, making it a truly set-and-forget archival system. The problem is that if your subscription expires you lose the ability to make new backups, although existing ones will remain accessible for as long as you keep OneCare installed.