Free antivirus by MS

[cgonzo]

I saw an article today on MSNBC that Microsoft and Computer Associates are offering a 12 month antivirus software.
http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/index.cfm?

[Damned Angel]

WTF? Now I'm scared. MS getting into the antivirus and firewall business?? For free??

Guess they will make their money back through pay per incident tech support helping people get rid of viruses the software let through and restoring systems back to their origional state after the software screws things up.

I am very leery of this software, but will give it a try on a test box.

[NooNoo]

I downloaded there 2003 av - very nice. May as well get this too!

[jmani]

Speaking as someone who lives in a CA environment...be afraid, be very afraid!!
We use CA products exclusivly here and nothing ever works...now throw MS on top of that and I can only think of two words...Job Security.

[techs]

Has anyone tried it?

[Rô©kHøµñÐ]

Nope, any A/V company would have to pay me to try anything other than my norton corporate solution. It is the first A/V program that I have used that I can honestly say I forget it is even there. I know it is expensive in software terms but I have personally rolled it out on 40 computers in less than a minute.

[CaptainSpeleo]

I've used Computer Associates eTrust EZ Antivirus 6.1.7.0 for the past 2 years and have been happy with it. A year's subscription is $24.95. As far as them teaming up with Microsoft and offering it for free, I've heard nothing about it.

Frank's Windows 95/98 Tips (Also a Windows XP user)

[rgharper]

Has anyone tried it?

I grabbed it a while back, it's running on both my Win2K AD servers here without a problem. I've tested it by deliberately downloading viruses (yeah, I know, but still <G>) and it's caught and killed them before they got saved.

[Garak]

looks like a tryer.... oh well i need to format soon anyhow...

[geoscomp]

I've got this free version running on two test boxes here with no problems so far..I've tried my virus laden test cd, and it finds all of them. I haven't used this product since the old days of free InoculateIT, but it seems to work just as well..and of course, the price is right.

[iowaguy12]

I have used this software for years. A few years ago it was known as Personal Edition and CA offered it for free to home users. I loaded it on every computer I built and everyone I knew. It detected viruses that Norton often wouldn't and it has updates almost every day and sometimes more than once a day. I have used CA's backup software for years and their support is excellent so I knew I would get great support from them on their anti-virus software. When sircam first came out one of my techs put a pc on the network that was infected with it and EZ trust caught it right away and stopped the other 100+ pc's on the network from being infected!! That right there was worth it. In trying to clean the computer that was infected that didn't have any anti-virus software on it in the first place, Norton had a 13 page document on how to remove it. All I did was CA was load it in safe mode and load the update and then scan the pc and it removed everything on it's own.

I have stuck with this anti-virus even when it was obscure and noone ever heard of it. It's great! I would recommend it to anyone without hesitation.

[gtiseb]

If I want free antivirus, I'll use AVG! No way would I trust MS to have anything to do with A/V . Dam, part of the reason why we NEED A/V is because OF ms and it's loose security practises.

[Ya_know]

If I want free antivirus, I'll use AVG! No way would I trust MS to have anything to do with A/V . Dam, part of the reason why we NEED A/V is because OF ms and it's loose security practises.

That's a damned fool statement.

[TekkieFreak]

I have just installed it.

It would appear to be CA's antivirus tied together with Zone Alarm firewall software.

Am I wrong?

[geoscomp]

Nope..you are right..and there are also a few other things like popup and popunder ad control and cookie handling...seems to be working well here so far.