Posted by testcrunch on 8th March 2007
I have Windows Live OneCare on all three of my machines.
One of them a Vista running laptop I hadn’t turned on for about 10 days, till yesterday. OneCare started when Vista starts and it had a look around to see what the state of the machines security is. And guess what? It told me I didn’t have an antivirus and suggested I connected to the internet to get one.
Eh. OneCare is an antivirus application as well as antispyware and antiphishing and lord knows what else not-very-well-tested additional functionality. So OneCare effectively lost track of some parts of itself. What is it with Microsoft, they’re definitely getting worse.
Rebooted machine and Onecare this time found its own antivirus and gave me a clean bill of health. Which is more than I can say for Onecare.
Paul Thurrott reckons Vista SP1 will come with a new kernel. That sounds like an operating system upgrade not a service pack upgrade. Jeez, how bad is the current Vista kernel if it’s got to be replaced in a service pack?
Quote of the day
‘I am not young enough to know everything’ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Posted in Vista - nothings compatible | No Comments »
Posted by testcrunch on 20th February 2007
Downloaded OneCare from the Microsoft site, inadvertently clicked on a wrong link and all of a sudden I’m on a ‘we want money’ page for the full version of OneCare.
£37.99 per year for three PC’s. Hmmm… that doesn’t work out so bad, so signed up. There was no activation code or serial number, it was just tied to your Microsoft passport address, which in my case is a hotmail address. This makes sense from Microsoft’s point of view as there are no activation codes for them to monitor.
It was also easy for me as when I downloaded OneCare onto the other two PC’s I clicked on the activation link, or whatever it was called, and was prompted to enter my passport address. At which point Microsoft obviously check that the address is valid, that I have purchased OneCare and that it hasn’t been installed on more than three PC’s. Anyway it worked.
Of course the slight weakness here is that if you know someone who has purchased OneCare and has less than three computers, that if you can guess their Hotmail address, and lets face it most people try and get their normal name as an email address, then you can download the trial version and activate it with their passport address knowing that they have registered less than three computers against it. Naughty.
Quote of the day
‘A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping’ Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)
Posted in Parental controls - who's in charge here? | No Comments »
