Posted on 06/06/2006 8:06:21 AM PDT by Salo
Microsoft takes on net nasties
MICROSOFT executives love telling stories against each other. Here's one that platforms vice-president Jim Allchin told at a recent Windows Vista reviewers conference about chief executive Steve Ballmer.
It seems Steve was at a friend's wedding reception when the bride's father complained that his PC had slowed to a crawl and would Steve mind taking a look.
Allchin says Ballmer, the world's 13th wealthiest man with a fortune of about $18 billion, spent almost two days trying to rid the PC of worms, viruses, spyware, malware and severe fragmentation without success.
He lumped the thing back to Microsoft's headquarters and turned it over to a team of top engineers, who spent several days on the machine, finding it infected with more than 100 pieces of malware, some of which were nearly impossible to eradicate.
Among the problems was a program that automatically disabled any antivirus software.
"This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world," Allchin told the audience.
If the man at the top and a team of Microsoft's best engineers faced defeat, what chance do ordinary punters have of keeping their Windows PCs virus-free?
Ballmer and Allchin didn't get to be such wealthy executives by ignoring a business opportunity, so last week, Microsoft launched Windows Live OneCare.
In doing so it seems to have begun a new battle in the PC security war because antivirus software vendors Symantec and McAfee have announced new products to challenge OneCare.
Described as an "all-in-one, automatic and self-updating PC care service designed to help consumers more easily protect and maintain their PCs", OneCare is at present available only in the US, where users will pay an annual fee of $US50 ($66).
DoubleClick thinks Microsoft has a hide to charge customers $66 a year to fix problems in its operating software that shouldn't be there in the first place, but no doubt many will pay up if it means an easy way of dealing with the increasing flood of viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and other computing nasties.
There is no news yet of a OneCare release date in Australia or anywhere else outside North America, but you can safely bet it will be here soon.
Microsoft does offer a free online virus scanning and tune-up service that Australians can access online, although its features are not as comprehensive as those of OneCare. Called Windows Live Safety Centre, it is at http://safety.live.com.
Rivals Symantec and McAfee, which face losing big chunks of their multibillion-dollar businesses to Microsoft, aren't taking all this lying down.
Both have promised an Australian release of the rival all-in-one security products they are rushing to market.
Symantec has announced Norton 360, a consumer PC security service that will include online identity theft protection, backup and PC tune-up capabilities, and automatic updates.
It will work with Windows XP and the coming Windows Vista.
The full international release of Norton 360 is expected towards the end of the year, but Symantec is inviting would-be users to sign up for a beta version, expected in the next few months.
You can sign up at www.symantec.com/norton360 betaprereg
McAfee is calling its OneCare killer Falcon and has predicted a release date sometime between June 21 and September 23.
It is expected to contain antivirus, anti-phishing, spyware and root-kit detection features, along with automated backups and network security.
How well Symantec/Norton and McAfee will be able to compete with the Microsoft remains to be seen.
As commentators are pointing out, Microsoft has a huge captive audience to whom it can promote the new service: the many millions who download its regular security updates.
On the other hand, Symantec and McAfee can play on the distrust that many disgruntled users feel for Microsoft and maybe undercut the $66 fee. The war has just begun.
As a footnote, Symantec has just issued an automated back-up and recovery program for consumers.
Norton Save and Restore is said to make it very easy for home PC users to preserve photos, music files, financial information and other digital data.
It sells for $99.95 and until June 20 can be bought only at Dick Smith Electronics stores. From that date it will be more widely available.
Pings.
Bush 2000 has another career.
I would have expected Ballmer to call the afflicted computer a p*ssy and throw a f***in' chair at it.
So all those effin' screams and emails and calls and articles and stories in the various media never piqued your interest before?
....so now they want to charge us all an annual fee to try to deal with problems that Windows shouldn't have in the first place!! I hadn't been one of the Microsoft-haters before (just don't devote any thought to them), but I might start now!! They should be addressing these problems as basic product support, not as an opportunity to screw us over again. I recently had a really bad infestation that took an expert quite an effort to clean up - it would block any changes to the registry aimed at getting rid of the sucker, but fortunately there was a script available at some techie website that finally did the trick.
Everybody likes to bash Microsoft, but you wouldn't leave your doors and windows wide open and invite any stranger to come into your house and hang out forever.
No, you wouldn't, but you would expect the home-builder to have installed doors with locks and windows that lock form the inside, not charge you extra for retrofitting your house with the, or (a better analogy still), steadfastly refuse to put decent locks and doors on your house, then charge you a monthly fee for a fancy burglar alarm system.
Sorry, but MS's cavalier attitude toward security deserves 'bashing'.
Most unsolvable problems can be solved by running virus and antispyware programs from safe mode.
We did that, it didn't help with this one.
Call me a cynic, but I think Microsoft believes many of their customers are suckers, and I'm starting to agree with them. If people can't be bothered to download free antivirus programs or even turn on the built-in XP firewall, but yet complain that they then get infected, why shouldn't MS try to cash in on them to the tune of $50/year?
The smart folks are gonna use the free solutions...but then the smart folks aren't infected in the first place.
The smart folks are gonna use the free solutions...but then the smart folks aren't infected in the first place.
I've never had virus or spyware on any machine that had preventive software installed, but I clean up computers for other people and companies.
On machines where kids have installed all kinds of spyware, I find doing a Windows repair/reinstall almost always works. This replaces all the windows programs, but keeps other programs installed.
If this doesn't work, doing a complete reinstall will work. It doesn't require reformatting, so it leaves all your data files intact, but it does uninstall all third party programs. These can be reinstalled from the original disks. In any case, this does not require a couple of days, and most of this can be done unattended.
This reminds me of a Far Side cartoon showing a brick, with a note attached to it, that had been thrown through a window. The note said, "Window broken? Call ACME Window Repair."
Heh heh heh...hacked?
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