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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 76 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 Comprehensive But Slow Mar 30, 2007
By Electronic Gadgetphile
I was an original Beta tester for Live One Care and ultimately became a subscriber so my experience is well over a year with this utility. The good is that it is mindless and has very few options, it configures itself, updates itself automatically and lets you know when a problem develops. The bad is that it is mindless and has very few options. The really bad is that on lower powered laptops, like my Sony SZ230P with Intel Centrino Duo T2400 1.83 GHz running XP Pro, it will progressively bog the system down to the point where the only way to use the computer is to power down the system and reboot. The start up then took in excess of 10 minutes until the hard drive stopped spinning. I did all the usual stuff like cleaning out caches, defragging the HD, running chkdisk, cleaning the registry, etc. to no avail. The final straw was having the OneCare application fail to start properly. Microsoft has great customer support but we were unable to solve the problem short of uninstalling the software and reloading same. This would stay stable for 3-4 weeks then I had to repeat the procedure all over again. After the last uninstall, I obtained a copy of McAfee Anti-virus and installed it. The system is much faster and more stable, resembling the great Sony SZ I had when it was new. If OneCare works for you then it is a great choice but if you notice your system slowing down and your HD grinding away for many minutes at a time, you may want to consider one of the other security suite programs.
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 does it work? Jul 06, 2007
By George Heppelle
"Computer Teacher"
My 90 days is nearly up, Live One has never found anything wrong with my system. Curious about perfection, I ran another spyware program and found 9 TAC5 spyware, hmmm! Live One does everything else it says it does, backups, de-frags etc - as for protection, I'm quite concerned. In 90 days this program has missed an average of 7 risks per day, I don't expect every program to catch everything, 1 would have given me some comfort!
Thumbs Down!
16 of 19 found the following review helpful:
 GREAT ALL AROUND SECURITY Feb 08, 2007
By Greg
"greg19444"
I have used Norton, McAfee, and Trend Micro security suites in the past. While I found Norton and McAfee to seriously slow my system down and take over all areas of my machine, Live OneCare uses very little memory and can be easily managed. I have experienced no problems whatsoever and have had no networking issues, either. I can highly recommend this for people looking for an unobtrusive, fully comprehensive security system.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
A dissapointing effort from Microsoft Aug 10, 2007
By Matthieu P. Raillard
I have probably tried the vast majority of Antivirus and Security suites out there: Zone Alarm, Norton, PC-Cillin, Pandasoft, McAfee and others. None of them have ever provided the complete package, which is why I keep looking. I have a few criteria which define my ideal suite: 1) Strong virus protection and a sturdy firewall; good antispyware is a plus, though I tend to use a number of other programs for that. 2) Low resource use. One reason I abandoned Norton was that the program had become a resource hog, gobbling up memory and processor cycles like nobody's business. 3) Simple, non-intrusive user interface. Zone Alarm has the best firewall in the business, but the program is so intrusive it is constantly interrupting. I want to be able to set my preferences, and forget about the software.
Enter Windows Live: OneCare. I was hoping, a bit ingenuously perhaps, that since it was designed by Microsoft for Windows, it would provide a new and more elegant approach to security. Unfortunately, I have been rather disappointed with the software, and will probably switch again in the near future.
The GOOD: Clean interface, very easy to use. Geared for novices, but with some advanced configurations available if you dig around. Integrates well with windows. Generally quite fast, auto-updates seamlessly. Makes performing a variety of maintenance tasks easy (defrag, clean space, etc).
The BAD: Weak performance. Google reviews, and you'll see that the antivirus and firewall both have scored quite low in comparison tests. The Tune-Up and Virus Scan options start up without warning while you work and there are too few scheduling options for them. The whole package doesn't feel as good at rooting out problems as other suites.
The UGLY: The majority of these functions should be STANDARD in any new operating system. The fact we have to pay extra to (effectively) defrag and clean our PC's is just sad.
The bottom line is that this product is a first attempt at integrating an MS security suite with Windows. It is elegantly designed, but comes up short where it matters. It is not customizable enough, and its scanning ability is seriously lagging.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
great idea, bad product Apr 08, 2007
By B. Lim
Summary:
I wasted a lot of time trying to make this work, and I eventually went back to other products.
In theory, integrating virus checker, firewall, spyware, and data backup into a unified suite (like MS Office with Word, Excel, & PowerPoint) makes sense. However, this software package seems poorly made; it did not work very well for me.
Hardware, OS, & primary software used:
1. Dell Lattitude D620 Laptop with 2GB RAM, Windows XP, MS Office
2. Dell X1 Laptop (thin/lightweight) with 2GB RAM, Windows XP, MS Office
3. Dell Dimension Desktop with 4 GB RAM, Windows XP, children's games
Prior virus/spyware products:
Lattitude & X1: Norton
Dimension: freeware provided by our ISP
Theory: Since Microsoft makes the OS & office applications that get infected with viruses, their product should be better integrated with the OS. There will be synergy by integrating several related software applications.
Lesson:
Well, after a series of terrible experiences, I hope others will benefit from my wasted time:
1. Instead of loading most of the program from the CD & downloading small updates, this seems to load only a small part of the program and downloads huge files. This made me feel that the product was shipped unfinished. You had to do this separately for each machine since it hides the downloaded files then deletes them prior to finishing the installation. This took a better part of an afternoon.
2. I purchased a 3-pack license. Installing and activating the software on the 2nd & 3rd machines required a series of very annoying steps that involved logging into their website with broken links. It finally required a phone call. At least, the phone support experience was good.
3. The product promises to minimize performance impact, and improve overall performance. On the Lattitude & Dimension (powerful machines), there was no difference in performance, but we could notice a slightly slower performance with the X1. This was later verified when we uninstalled the MS Windows OneCare and replaced it with another product.
4. The product has difficulty updating. It opens a small message box that asks you to click to update OneCare, but that takes you to a webpage that only works about 1 in 4 times.
5. Except for the first time, data backup always has several errors that I have to manually fix. This has very rarely happened with other data backup software I've used.
6. Some applications, the firewall asks everytime for permission to connect to the Internet although the application is in the list to always allow this connection.
See all 76 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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