I’ve been using Windows Live Onecare for a short while now. A friend recommended it to me, so I took the 90 day trial and that has just recently expired.

So what did I think? Well, I love it. It does my backups, antivirus, firewall, and all my other security for me all in one piece of it. It runs smoothly and quietly on my computer, doesn’t use much resources, and in general is very accurate on what is good and what is bad.

There’s one catch – it’s not free. It will cost you around £30-40 for a one-year license which will cover up to 3 computers in your home. That includes all updates and once you’ve paid up you can leave it alone. Now most people would say, “well thirty quid aint bad for a piece of kit that’ll cover my computers for a year” and I’d agree, but there is software out there that will do the same for free.

However, Microsoft (who owns and runs Onecare) did announce late last year that they were going to discontinue Onecare and replace it with a newer, better, free piece of kit that will do the same job. This I’m looking forward to. I’d love to use Onecare, but I just don’t feel the money is worth it when there’s software out there will do the same job for free. So if Microsoft can launch a good free piece of kit, I will definately be happy to use it.

But for now, I’m going to revert to good old Comodo Internet Security. I love Comodo software. It’s free, easy to use, and a “set and forget” firewall. It does my firewall, antivirus and anything else security related – like Onecare, but free. Updates are free, it doesn’t spam me with ads and adware, and I can just leave it to do its job. Perfect.