Microsoft designed OneCare as part of an idea set named Windows Live (see official ideas website). Windows Live OneCare itself entered a beta state in the summer of 2005. The managed beta program was launched before the public beta, and was located on BetaPlace, Microsoft's old beta delivery system. On May 31, 2006, Windows Live OneCare made its official debut in retail stores in the United States.
The beta version of Windows Live OneCare 1.5 was released in early October 2006 by Microsoft. Version 1.5 was released to manufacturing on January 3, 2007. It was made available to the public on January 30, 2007. Beta testing for version 2.0 is scheduled to start in early spring of 2007. Beta testers can sign up at Microsoft Connect to participate in the testing of the upcoming product.
Windows Live OneCare currently features an integrated anti-virus program, firewall, backup and restore utility, tune-up utility with the integrated functionality of Windows Defender for malware protection. The future addition of a registry cleaner has been announced.
Windows Live OneCare is built for ease-of-use and is designed for home users. OneCare also attempts a very minimal interface to lessen user confusion and resource signature. At the most basic, it adds an icon to the system tray that tells the user at a glance the status of the system's health. Three alert levels are available, from green (good) to yellow (minor problem) to red (major problem).
Version 1.5 of OneCare is only compatible with the 32-bit versions of Windows XP SP2 and Vista.[2] The 64-bit versions of XP and Vista are unsupported at this time, as are several other versions of Windows covered by the Microsoft Life Cycle Policy.
Windows Live OneCare requires the user to activate the product within 90 days of installation. This can only be achieved by having a valid Windows Live ID so that an association can be made between the account and the subscription to OneCare. When the product is activated, the grey message bar at the top of the program disappears, and the subscription is fully activated for 1 year from the date of activation. A user can check the status of their subscription on the Billing page at http://billing.microsoft.com/
Windows Live OneCare does not currently require the operating system to be checked with either Windows Genuine Advantage or Validation, neither before, during or after installation. The program is installed from a stub downloaded from the http://onecare.live.com/ website.
Windows Live OneCare Protection Plus is the security component in the OneCare suite. It consists of three parts:
- A two-way firewall blocking both incoming and outgoing traffic, as opposed to that of Windows XP that blocks only incoming traffic. A two-way firewall protects against trojan or other viral infections running on the local computer.
- An anti-virus tool that uses regularly updated anti-virus definition files.
- An anti-spyware tool that uses the Windows Defender engine as a core. In version 1.0, this required the separate installation of Windows Defender and was not integrated into the OneCare interface (although it could be managed and launched from OneCare). Version 1.5 integrated the Windows Defender engine into OneCare and no longer requires separate installation.
Windows Live OneCare Performance Plus is the component that performs monthly PC tune-up related tasks, such as:
- Disk cleanup.
- Disk defragmentation.
- A full virus scan by using the antivirus component in the suite.
- Check for Windows updates by using the Microsoft Update service.
- User notification if files are in need of backing up.
http://onecare.live.com/
