Ian E said:
Bill -
In all the IT Shops I've worked at (I'm a consultant) you would be fired
or your contract would be abruptly terminated if you installed beta
software on a production machine let alone ALL of the production machines
in the client's environment. Are you saying that this IS something that
you do?
(Sure you would have one or more test machines and install it there for
evaluation purposes).
I work with individuals and small offices. They trust my advice, and my
experience with Microsoft Antispyware has been such that I have, in fact,
installed it on most production machines. I have to say that I've never
been called to explain an alert--the only mention of it I get from users is
they mention seeing when it has updated. And when I look at a machine which
is on 24x7, I notice the scan result messages.
I've been personally impressed, and somewhat horrified, at the level of
requests for information about how to do unattended installs in this
beta--that should scare you!
With regard to 2nd point:
2(a). Well to be honest I don't have / haven't had any spyware on my
computers to date, since I am careful about avoiding it. (I have however
fixed the machines of several people who've been inflicted with it). So
perhaps I cannot comment so authoritatively on whether MSAS can detect /
remove it. However, I do occasionally find tracking cookies in my browser
cache and I find that Lavasoft Ad-aware will flag things that MSAS will
just ignore.
The builds distributed so far do not scan for cookies, which pretty well
explains your final sentence.
2(b). As for things that aren't working in MSAS you could just look back
in the newsgroup for all the comments that others have made. Another
example I'll give is the List of Running Processes in Advanced Tools ->
System Explorers. When you select an item (one of the running processes)
and then click "Learn more about this application...", a dialogue box
opens and says "The requested information is not currently available." It
did this for every one of the applications I selected. Furthermore, in the
dialogue, not all of the UI elements are there.
With regard to 2(b) you'll probably respond "Yes, but this is beta
software. That hasn't been implemented yet." To which I'll respond "Yes."
You're right about my response here: This beta is based on what had been an
existing commercial product. If you wish to check out another product
licensed from that same technology, look at Sunbelt Software's CounterSpy
product.
The beta was released about 3 weeks after acquisition of the technology. A
great deal of work was done rather quickly, and it is apparent when you
consider such issues as accesibility, localization, and use by multiple
users, or administrator vs limited user issues---that a great deal more work
will be required. I'm not surprised that there are some dead ends and
information missing.
However, reviews, both of the product which forms the basis (Giant
Antispyware) and of Microsoft Antispyware, have found that it performs very
well.
Groups such as this are largely composed of folks with problems--make a
count of the total number of messages in these groups--this is easy to do
via NNTP. Now, consider the 5-7 million downloads there have been of the
beta. How do you see the percentages of folks having problems? Sure there
are some in that category who may not have found these groups--but although
I find some of the issues seen here as surprising in a public beta, I think
the beta product is working routinely and effectively for the vast majority
of its users.
