Windows Live OneCare Review
If you come to think of it, the product is priced in the price range of really good anti virus-softwares. However, OneCare has more to offer then a mere anti virus protection. The gear OneCare comes strapped with extends to backing up certain data on your PC, Performance Plus (PC tune up utility) and a firewall (much better then the one provided in Windows XP) and virus and spyware detection (pretty weird as Windows Defender provided this option, too and did a pretty good job).
The interface is one of the best I have seen in any Microsoft product up to now. The gradients and the entire mis-en-place definitely lead you into recognizing a Microsoft product, even if the logo and the name of the application were to be removed.
There is only one menu available with five options running down in the left hand side of the application window. The options that are mostly used by the customer are also available in the largest screen of the software and this way you will have easy access to Protection Plus, Performance Plus and Backup and Restore functions of OneCare.
Protection Plus will scan your computer for viruses and spyware and eliminate it. There are three scanning types available: quick (less then ten minutes), complete (checks every area of your computer, including external drives) and custom (allows the user to choose the folders to be verified). The information displayed in this section comprises definition updates, when the last
scan was performed, view the last scan report, the state of the phishing filter in IE 7 and the state of the firewall.
Performance Plus is designed to make your computer run faster and the stages taken to bring your PC in optimum condition are removing unnecessary files, defragmenting the hard disk, scanning for viruses and unwanted software, checking for files that need backing up and checking for high priority security updates from Microsoft.
No need to worry about which are the files that OneCare considers unnecessary, as it will only rid your machine of temporary files (IE, Windows, Office and temporary offline files) together with program installation files that are no longer needed by the system like Java applets or ActiveX controls. The tune-up can be scheduled to take place at a regulate time interval (th minimum is one week).