Thread: MicroSoft Launch Paid Security Subscription Service

You see all it does though?? Antivirus, antispyware, tune-ups, and backup. If it's off-site backup, I'm there.

Considering that MS owns at least one major syware company (Claria, formerly known as Gator), I wouldn't trust their antispyware tool(s) out of fear that they'd be biased toward their properties. The existing antispyware tool had Claria left unflagged as spyware in initial releases, so we know that they aren't above biasing their software in that way.

Also, if MS can't write an OS without using open-ended buffers (buffer overflow issues are the main source of security holes in Windows and other MS tools), do you really think they'll be able to produce a decent antivirus product?

I have a hard enough time paying Bill, Paul and Steve for their OS, let alone their toolkit that I cna't see being any better than the freely available tools that I use now...
It's like M$ is saying, "We sold you this insecure OS that virus writers exploit often ebcause of the number of vulnerabilities, so now pay us more money for a service to fix it." **** that.

I dunno...

I'm still down with free stuff, AVG, Ad-Aware, linux...

But I'm thinkin in terms of my clients. What's going to be easy for them? All of them come to me for backup solutions. Right now, I just back everybody up via FTP to my website. It works though.

BUT, if MS were to offer backup services for $50/year, holy hell, my troubles are over, no more checking to see if the stupid backup made it 100% to my site. And, it's not my fault if it doesn't work. Yay.

Ok, nevermind. "regularly copies your important files and settings to CD, DVD, or external hard disk"

Whoopadeedoo, I can set a batch file to ntbackup and do the same damn thing. Nevermind. They're just packaging all the crap that already comes with it + free crap they already offer + some gay antivirus.

Basically this is how MS doing business for years

It also helped create software security businesses like Symantec and McAfee. Microsoft has been a partner with those businesses, but now it is a competitor.

Basically you paid 50 bucks a years to run windows update.