After Microsoft pulled the plug on it’s OneCare product line it announced that it would be re-releasing the antivirus product as a free product before the end of 2009. Microsoft already offers AntiMalware in the way of Windows Defender, considering the fact that even though sales of OneCare wasn’t that great, in many AV tests OneCare rated in the top 3 so the fact Microsoft is basically repackaging it and releasing it for free no strings attached should give Norton, McAfee and the other Antivirus makers that seem to just release more and more bloated software year after year a nice run for their money.
According to Janice Chaffin, president of Symantec’s Consumer Division, “Microsoft’s free product is basically a stripped down version of the OneCare product Microsoft pulled from the shelves. A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected.” which I find to be COMPLETE AND UTTER BULL.
As a computer technician, and network engineer let me just break it down for you. Microsoft already has a “Suite”.
Firewalls have been built in to XP and Vista, in fact Vista supports bi-directional filtering. But even when it comes down to this it doesn’t really matter to the average consumer sitting behind their linksys router NAT’d and firewall’d already so why do we need additional firewalling? Oh ya so that Norton can randomly screw up and blog mail and messenger and other oddities that I’ve seen over the past 3 years.
AntiPhishing… last I checked this was built into IE8
AntiMalware… Windows Defender in Vista and Windows 7
AntiSpam… Windows Mail / Outlook already have spam filters and their constantly getting better.
and now Microsoft is moving Morro to be a free Antivirus to complete the security “Suite” as the Norton and Mcaffee schills continue to sound their “we’re better because you pay for us” Bulls*it. The fact of the matter is in the modern day and age if you do your windows updates, and run a basic free antivirus your pretty much as safe as you ever will be, What Norton and the big Antivirus manufaturers want is to scare consumers into thinking they need their bloated slow and useless software when the simple fact is.
Ok i’ve rambled for long enough, on to the goodies care of neowin for the leak. Remember Morro will apparently be releasing for free before the end of 2009 to work side by side with Windows Defender (hence the similar look).
Ok the unbelievable has happened reports are breaking everywhere that Michael Jackson is dead! He died today of Cardiac Arrest. The calls started coming in at 12:20pm and by 5:30pm the report is that after being rushed to the hospital and 45 minutes of resucitation they were not able to save him and he passed away.
