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- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 88 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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17 out of 19 people found this review helpful
1.0 stars
"Not as good as many freeware programs."
Pros: average firewall but blocks many safe programs but can be configured to allow them after they get blocked.
Cons: poor virus and trojan protection, poor system backup, poor spyware protection.
Summary: As a computer programmer, I tested the Windows Live OneCare on one of my computers.
I will have to say that I was very disappointed with its overall preformance.
First, the firewall blocks the connections to a program before it asks you if you want to allow it. You have to check allow next time. This is very aggravating, it should ask you before it blocks something that you want. It also allowed some open ports which Windows XP SP2 Firewall didn't allow. ZoneAlarm free version did much better and does ask you before it blocks anything.
The virus and trojan protection is poor. I tested this with many know viruses in the wild and it did not detect many of them. I could say how good it is at removing viruses and trojans since most of my tests were inactive virus and trojan samples. All of the freeware anti-virus softwares (Avast, AVG, and AntiVir) did detect these virus and trojan samples. So did Norton, Nod32, McAfee, TrendMicro Pc-cillin, Kaspersky and BitDefender.
System backup wasn't very good either. It is more easy to just right click a file or folder on your computer and send it to your write drive.
The spyware protection had many false positives. On my clean computer, it detected 16 false positives almost as many as PestPatrol. Free programs like Spybot S&D, Ad-Adware SE, SpywareBlaster, and SpywareGuard had better protection. For a full spyware protection Webroot SpySweeper and PC Tools SpywareDoctor do an excellent job but you have to buy them.
There are many better options to choose from whether you want freeware or want to buy.
