The Family Computer: Maintaining, backing up computer
While I was writing last week, I tried a couple of services for disk management so you wouldn’t have to. One was Microsoft’s free online maintenance tools at onecare.live.com and the other its for-fee Live OneCare. I beta-tested the for-fee Live OneCare during its trial period and found it really streamlined maintenance. The service was automated and worked quietly in the background. For older machine owners, it may use too many resources, slowing you down quite a bit. My dual-core Pentium D 2.8Ghz, though, was up to the task. If yours is older, I can’t recommend the service, especially at $49.95 per year. Microsoft has just renewed its offering of the Live OneCare service for free for 90 days, so you can try it out to see if it works on your machine. You’ll find the offer at the onecare.live.com homepage. The other service I tested was Microsoft’s free, online service at onecare.live.com. To access the free service, click on the Safety Scanner link. I found it to be very good except for one thing: the virus and spyware scan took 4 1/2 hours.
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