What a great day for Microsoft!  As you certainly all know, Microsoft launched Windows Vista across the globe today.

Not to be outdone – the OneCare team had an important launch of our own.  Today, we launched the next generation of Windows Live OneCare.  Customers from around the world (Australia, Austria, Belgium Canada France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States) now have access to the same PC Care solution customers in the U.S. have come to love.  So, if you plan on upgrading to Vista and you're looking to provide an extra layer of hands-free maintenance and security, check out a copy of Windows Live OneCare and give it a try. 

As a reminder to all our current subscribers, the latest updates to OneCare will be rolled out to you automatically – OneCare style.  No need to go out and purchase new software! 

As always, thanks for all your support.   Your feedback and insight shaped several of the new features in this latest release, and certainly helped us improve the stability and performance.  We look forward to hearing more of your feedback about the latest version. 

Best,

Yoav

We've been talking about our next major release for a long time, and now we are finally making it official. Today we announced that Windows Live OneCare v1.5 will be rolling out to customers in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States on January 30th.

While we're excited to be rolling out this major upgrade to OneCare customers around the world, we know it would never have been possible without our beta testers. Some of you original beta testers may remember the special offer we extended to OneCare v1 beta testers in the Spring of 2006. Well, we're doing it again. If you participated in the beta process over the past few months, you can expect a special offer via email in the next few days. Beta customers who tested OneCare v1.5 that take advantage of this offer will receive a year's service for up to 60% off the regular price. It's just our way of saying thank you for helping ensure the latest version of OneCare is up to the high standards of quality and protection our customers have come to expect.

Not a beta tester? No worries - when OneCare v1.5 rolls out on the 30th - we anticipate many retailers will offer rebates and in-store promotions as well. We want everyone to give OneCare v1.5 a try.

Just a quick reminder that if you are already a OneCare subscriber (or have an active free trial), you will automatically be upgraded in the next few days. And if you are a current subscriber, but decided to join the v1.5 beta anyway, you'll need to uninstall the beta and reinstall OneCare from http://onecare.live.com. By reinstalling the product, and reactivating the service with your existing subscription (by entering in your LiveID when "adding a PC to existing subscription") you will automatically receive OneCare v1.5 and won't need to purchase a new subscription. Also note that the process of uninstalling the beta and installing the upgrade will not count against your 3 PC subscription limit.

Thanks again for all your help and enjoy the discounted service.

Best,

Yoav

I just wanted to write a quick post today to alert you to some of the activity revolving around Vista's release. By now you've probably noticed the news around Vista's upcoming launch is reaching a fever pitch (see press release here).  The launch of Vista is a remarkable accomplishment and we're proud that our next generation of OneCare will be rolling out to customers at the same time.

The Vista compatible version of OneCare will be available for customers in 17 countries, starting January 30^th.  Meeting this deadline to ensure Vista compatibility was no small feat - and while we've been working hard - it would never have been possible without the help of our beta testers. Beta tester feedback and input has been invaluable in ensuring that OneCare continues to provide the easy, all-in-one experience our customers have come to expect, on the Vista OS.  Your valuable assistance in testing the OneCare v1.5 beta has been recognized and will not go without reward … more on that in the coming weeks.

Best,

Yoav

As most readers of this blog know by now, the OneCare team feels pretty strongly about comprehensive PC care. Our goal is to make it easy for users to "outsource" the management of your PCs. We want to make sure your protection, performance and backup all work smoothly, and don't require a lot of intervention – particularly if you won't want to be managing these things on a regular basis. Because after all, wouldn't you rather be surfing the Web, communicating with friends or being productive, rather than managing applications allowed through your firewall, or manually backing up data on a periodic basis?

For most of our customers, the answer is yes – they are happy to let us take care of their PC. Which is why we made sure to include spyware protection in our initial release of Windows Live OneCare. In v1 we provided a link to the beta release of Windows Defender. Although it required a separate installation, it was a good interim solution to help provide adequate protection. In preparing for our next major release, v1.5 – due out at the end of this month - we resolved to make the experience between these two technologies better. Indeed, in v1.5 we now have a single "engine," to scan and handle viruses and spyware. This benefits our customers in two distinct ways: first, you no longer need to distinguish between virus and spyware protection, it's all part of the same technology. This is consistent with our mission of keeping it simple – most users have told us they aren't interested in learning the fine distinctions between threat categories. They simply want to be protected, so that's what we are providing.

Second, having an integrated engine for virus and spyware allows Windows Live OneCare to provide deeper, and therefore better protection than having the two stand-alone applications. Here's what I mean. The engine that works in real time, to scan any file opened or accessed, must operate at a fairly low level in the operating system. Basically, it means that a combined engine (which relies on the same mini-filter driver) can catch BOTH viruses and spyware as early as possible, making an integrated engine more efficient and safer for our users.

Overall, we're pleased with the progress we've made in this area, and believe it will be better for our customers – that's the ultimate goal. However, we have noticed some comments on the blog and in our forums which suggest there is some confusion regarding the actual integration, and relationship, of the two technologies.

Let me try and clarify - if Windows Defender is installed on a machine and then OneCare v1.5 is installed afterward, by default the installation will disable Windows Defender. Windows Defender will then display a dialog indicating that it has been disabled, and asking if the user wants to turn it on again. When you are installing OneCare v1.5 you should close this dialog without re-enabling Defender. OneCare intentionally disables Defender because it can cause system instability to have both running at the same time, and since OneCare is a superset of Defender, there is no reason you would need both of them running.

A number of folks have also asked why OneCare disables Windows Defender rather than simply removing it. Two reasons: First, Windows Defender is part of the Windows Vista operating system and cannot be uninstalled, it can only be disabled. Second, if for any reason a user uninstalls OneCare, we will automatically turn Windows Defender back on to help keep users protected against spyware.

There is one last issue which some of you may have experienced. If Windows Defender was installed on your machine and now appears to be "missing," it may be due to the fact that the final Beta version of Windows Defender recently expired, on December 31, 2006. If you installed OneCare v1.5 (the beta) on a Windows XP machine with Windows Defender Beta 2 previously installed, OneCare automatically disabled the Beta version of Defender. If you try and install the latest version of Windows Defender, you will see a dialog indicating that you do not need to install both products, "OneCare has been found…"

I hope that clarifies the main issues – if you have more detailed questions or want to know more technical information, I suggest trying the Forum. And please keep the comments and questions coming. I'll be adding posts on some of the other common questions/issues posted on the blog in the coming weeks.

Thanks,

Yoav