I've been using OneCare on my home PC's for a while now and really like it. I compared it side by side with NOD, AVG and Avast, and it compared very nicely. I don't think that a lawsuit would go far, unless the courts are also going to force AVG and the others to stop providing their products for free also. Let's face it, giving away entry level products in an attempt to sell more capable products has been very commonplace in the Anti-Malware arena since its inception. TVK
-----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 1:37 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: MS to give away AV/AS, discontinue OneCare in 2009 On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Carl Houseman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It doesn't seem that there will be any business restrictions on use of this > product. If not limited to home/private-consumer use, it will likely pull > the rug out from under the other AV companies in the SB market. Interesting. I imagine Symantec, NAI, etc., will be upset. Expect an anti-trust lawsuit. Outside that, I think it does depend on a few things, though: A1. How manageable the free AV is. A2. How effective it is. For A1: You may be tempted to say that a small business doesn't care about management, but working in a small business, I would say the opposite: It's the big companies that can afford to pay people full-time to worry about stuff. Small players *need* the automation tools just to stay afloat. (Of course, explaining that to the PHBs is tough, but that's nothing new.) For A2: I'm never going to be entirely comfortable with the idea of using $ANYCORP security software to protect an $ANYCORP system. It's not that I think Microsoft is doing anything nominally nefarious, it's that an outside perspective will often yield different results. Just like financial firms should always be audited by an outside party. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
