Review: Microsoft Windows Live Onecare security software

As the name suggests, Onecare is one of the growing breed of software products that offer what they call 'total' protection for your computer.

In addition to containing firewall and anti-virus components, Onecare has a spyware killer and a backup program, as well as a system cleaner that will rid your PC of junk files, and a tune-up utility for tweaking it to top performance.

The annual subscription allows it to be used on three computers in the home, and it can be used on both Windows XP and Vista. We tested it with Vista – it's more at home with the newer operating system, and some of the components are built on things that already exist in Vista, such as the Defender anti-spyware tool.

It was easy to install, and the software worked unobtrusively in the background with few alerts to bother the user, except when necessary (for instance, you get a firewall alert when a new program tries to access the internet). The Onecare icon that appears in the Notification Area changes colour depending on how well the system is protected – to get it to go green it's necessary to follow all the steps listed in the main program window, such as setting up a backup regime.

We found this tricky, because Onecare refused to work with a couple of the external disks we tried. It worked eventually, though, at which point we were given the (literal) green light. The new version of Onecare adds features such as online backup for photos, although this costs a hefty £39 a year on top of the price of the main product.

Administering the computer and changing settings is easy, but Onecare cleverly makes it hard to change anything by mistake. It puts the three computers in your house on which Onecare is loaded (if you choose to do so) in what's called the Onecare Circle, which means you can administer any of them from the master computer (so you don't need to physically use a child's computer to change their settings). It also adds clever abilities such as printer sharing to all the computers in the circle (and backing up all the PCs in the circle).

Vista compatible: Yes

See also:

Review: Norton 360 Version 2 security software

The return of the all-round security software  14 May 2008

Review: McAfee Total Protection 2007 internet security

An all-in-one suite of tools to shore up security on your PC  09 Mar 2007

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