Windows Live OneCare 2 beta. A (personal) First Impression

When Microsoft first came out with Windows Live OneCare version 1 and being the old beta tester that I am, I decided to give it a (very) short trial period by creating a restore point on my computer at the time and giving OneCare a week’s worth of thrashing. It only lasted three days but it was enough to convince me that the idea of the maker of my OS developing an Internet security suite for that very same OS was an idea that appealed to me. For too long it appeared that no matter the brand the Security suite I was currently using at the time, it’s merging with the OS was not so much by a harmonious mutual consent but more rather by hostile take-over. There were always two distinct separate entities here. The OS (Windows) and the security suite whose presence it barely seemed to tolerate.

Now over a year later, Windows Live OneCare 2 beta (call it WLOC 2 for short) shows up on the scene and after surfing around for any initial horror stories and finding only the usual “it trashed my computer” and the ever popular “It hosed my OS! Thanks for nothing!” from those who probably didn’t have any control over their computers in the first place, I decided to give this new beta version 2 a try out. So I sent my regular Internet security suite off for a well earned vacation and let Live OneCare 2 beta take over the duties for the interim.

Initial impressions:

The suite has only been installed for 4 days so when I say initial impressions, that’s exactly what I mean. In fact I wouldn’t have even bothered with this post if it hadn’t been for a few very obvious differences I immediately noticed in comparison with my usual Internet security suite. I’ll abstain from outright comparison in this post due to the short time OneCare has been running on my machine however, here’s a few initial thoughts:

The PC: 2004 HP Pavilion a645c, Windows XP Pro (fully updated), AMD 3200+ CPU w/ 1GB (unshared) DDR memory.

HDD: Seagate 200GB w/19.6 used.

Normal security suite: Panda Internet Security Suite 2007

Connection: DSL 768k wireless router

Install: Install was painless and for the most part, intuitive to the user. One thing though–you need a Windows ID to complete the install and I would strongly suggest you sign in first before you attempt the install. And the installation is online only–the download is only a 1.4 mb install program.

Setup: Setup, compared with other popular security suites is downright simple but that’s the idea here. I set the firewall to ask me what I wanted to do when a program wanted access to the Internet since I do like to maintain some control. Once I clicked “Always allow” for a particular program, the alert didn’t come up again for that program unless I upgraded the program.At that point I had to allow it again since WLOC 2 had detected that the program has changed. To my surprise, some new users/testers on the WLOC forum didn’t like this alert coming up just for an upgrade. I can’t understand this since I would most definitely want to know if a program had been changed, especially if I didn’t do it, right? And this wasn’t any different than way my regular Internet security suite operated as far as updated programs went.

Virus scanning: Virus scanning breaks down to three choices for the user. I’ll go into some detail here since this is the meat and potatoes of any Internet security suite along with the firewall:

• Quick Scan: This scan is supposed to check the most common places that virus’s hangout on one’s PC. This appeared to include the Windows, Program Files, Document and Settings and of course all the IE Temporary Files Folders in the scan.
  Time to completion: 2.5 min

• Custom Scan: Does the same thing as most other subscription based suites–allows the user to choose what folders they wish to scan. This of course, works as it’s supposed to in fact I like the overall simplicity and straightforwardness of the entire suite and this is no exception. One glaring exception though. There is no way to save a custom scan and folders have to be selected all over again for another scan. This is not enough reason for me to pass by WLOC 2 as my full time security suite but enough reason for me to state a case for saving custom scans on the forum…several times if necessary.
• Complete Scan: Does just what it says. Every file on your PC, no matter how small or insignificant, anywhere they may be get checked. Stick in any thumb drive, external drive, flash media card, DVD or CD and it gets added to scan automatically or at least that’s what it says it’s supposed to do. For now I just ran the 19.6GB I have stuffed on my hard drive. There’s been some initial complaints that the complete scan takes too long which was one of the main complaints of the previous versions as well and after my test I tend to agree. This, in my opinion, is something the developers absolutely have to improve on before the final release. Too many users have had the slow scan times as one of their main complaints for too long now.
  Time to Completion: 55 min
• Right-click menu scans: Like all the subscription based suites and even some of the free virus scanners, a “Scan for virus’s” type selection is added to the right-click context menu when right clicking on a drive, folder(s) or file(s).
• Email scanning: WLOC 2 does not scan your email messages as they come in but it does scan all email messages in a full scan. What it does do (same as Symantec does when a user disables email scanning) is provide real time protection on all file extensions, which includes attachments of course, as these files are opened. You can check out the info at this thread in the WLOC 2 forum. Whether you agree with this or not is up to you of course. With such email clients as the new Windows Live Mail (Outlook’s replacement) and Thunderbird 2 with their built in spam/junk/phishing type filters, it’s getting to the point where separate email scanning by a separate program is fairly redundant.

Virus scan initial conclusions:

I do realize that if someone has crammed 300GB of music, games and videos onto a 500GB drive, even the fastest virus scanner is going to tell you to go do your shopping and come back in a couple hours so users shouldn’t expect too much improvement here. You can only scan a hard drive so fast. And if your hard drive is like the one I mentioned above and badly fragmented as well, any virus scanner will tell you to go to bed and it might be done in the morning if they’re lucky. I’d like to see about a 1/4 increase in speed overall.

Email scanning? Jury’s still out on that one. Stay tuned.

Firewall: Okay, it has one. It’s two-way. It throws the proper alerts in your face when a program first asks for access to the Internet and whenever a previously allowed program is updated which is exactly what I except it to do. It also gives the proper choices which are “Always allow”, “Temporarily block” (in so many words) and just plain “Block” meaning always. I would like to see an additional choice added which is “Allow this once” but it’s not absolutely necessary. More on this later.

Back up, Tune up and OneCare Circle: I don’t use currently use the back up feature or the tune up feature as I’ve always done all these kind of tune-up type operations myself however, I did run the tune up feature a couple of times and the one glaring thing that stood out is that you can’t select which of the five operations you want to run and there’s no “Skip” button either. It’s all or nothing and some customization for this feature needs to be added for those who may wish to have a tad more control over things.

And since WLOC 2 is only installed on one computer here and there’s no home network available, I’ll have to pass on this one. Sorry about that.

The good and the bad or “what I’ve found so far”:

First, what I don’t like:

1. Scanning is too slow overall but doesn’t need that much of a speed increase to bring it on par with the other security suites I’ve used before. This has been a common complaint since Version 1 hit the streets (major).
2. You can’t save a custom scan setup (major).
3. Cannot temporarily allow a program access to the Internet (minor).
4. Cannot pick and choose which operations to run for a Tune-up and which ones to skip (major). A “Skip” button for the Tune-up run dialog box would be nice also (minor).

Anything else remains to be seen.

What I do like:

1. WLOC 2 uses up significantly less resources than the popular Internet security suites tend to, thus making my computer more responsive and allows more physical ram to be available. Whether this is due to not doing as much as those other suites, the fact that MS is designing this program to work with their OS hence a more seamless integration or a combination of both is yet to be seen. meanwhile I’m enjoying a more peppy machine.
2. Windows loads faster. See above.
3. My Internet is significantly faster than it was with my usual suite installed. This tells me initially that my usual Internet security suite may be choking down my Internet more than it needs to. Go Figure.
4. Simplicity at last! This is the way it should be for the average user. Effective, non-invading and simple! As set-it and forget-it as possible which is what Intenet security for the public at large who use Windows machines should be.

Conclusions: I do believe that WLOC 2 beta will have a significantly longer test run on my computer than version 1 did. What I need it to do on a daily basis, it appears to do well enough and since I long ago learned which side of tracks are (mostly) safe to surf on, I’m not too worried about anything getting through during the test period (however long that may be). But sometime in the near future I’ll have to put the real-time monitoring and scanning to the test and then we’ll see how WLOC 2 really performs. Meanwhile I have a couple of stand alone backup programs to check WLOC 2’s effectiveness as the days go by.

More later.

Technorati tags: Windows Live OneCare 2, OneCare 2 beta, Internet Security

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