Microsoft Windows Live Onecare.

Byline: Anthony Dhanendran

Microsoft Windows Live Onecare

Protect your PC from everything

As the name suggests, Onecare is one of the growing breed of software products that claim to offer what is called '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 with 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 [pounds sterling]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. You can load Onecare onto three computers and the software puts it 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).

Anthony Dhanendran

DETAILS

Vista Compatible: Yes

Contact: MIcrosoft 0870 601 0100

Info: www.microsoft.com

Retail Price: [pounds sterling]35

Buy: www.computeractive.co.uk/activeprices

Also consider...

Norton 360 version 2: [pounds sterling]60

A good all-round protector, although it's more expensive than Onecare.

HHHHH

www.computeractive.co.uk/2216616

An excellent, good value all-rounder for computer security

Good points: Covers all the bases; works unobtrusively

bad points: Backup was flaky; photo backup costs extra

overall: HHHHH