Windows Live OneCare 2.5 is now available and I've got some information for both new and existing Windows Live OneCare subscribers regarding the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 release I'd like to share.

Beginning last week (July 1st to be exact) - existing Windows Live OneCare users (paid subscribers) began automatically receiving Windows Live OneCare 2.5. The Windows Live OneCare website also began offering Windows Live OneCare 2.5 for new users as well. If you are a Windows Live OneCare subscriber and have not yet been automatically updated, you can either wait until the update occurs or download the new version from the Windows Live OneCare website.

NOTE:  If you choose not to wait for the automatic update to occur and want to go ahead and "manually" update yourself via downloading the new version off the Windows Live OneCare website - you will need to uninstall the previous version first before Windows Live OneCare 2.5 will install. I had not been automatically upgraded so I chose to install manually on 1 of my PCs but the others were automatically updated soon after.

So what's new with Windows Live OneCare 2.5? As I stated previously, the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 release is mainly an "under-the-hood" release. That means all the improvements take place behind-the-scenes so you will not notice any major new features or changes to the overall UI. Windows Live OneCare 2.5 is an incremental release that highlights Microsoft's ongoing commitment to improving Windows Live OneCare for paying subscribers.

However, Windows Live OneCare 2.5 does bring some changes worth taking note of. Windows Live OneCare is now available in 3 new markets: Brazil, India and Hong Kong. Also, if you are using the Online Photo Backup feature in Windows Live OneCare, you will be pleased to see that online storage capacity has been increased from 10GB to 50GB! Online Photo Backup is an added benefit to Windows Live OneCare users where they can pay $50 a year (on top of their existing Windows Live OneCare subscription) to have their digital photos automatically backed up to the "cloud".

As a Windows Live OneCare user myself, I enjoy seeing updates to Windows Live OneCare even if they aren't major updates. The priority for me is simply keeping my PC protected.

As you may have read, the Beta release of Windows Live OneCare 2.5 is now available on Microsoft Connect for folks to start testing. I of course went ahead and installed Windows Live OneCare 2.5 to give it a spin myself. So what's new with Windows Live OneCare 2.5? After installing the Beta myself, I didn't notice anything different over the non-Beta version. I decided to ping the Windows Live OneCare team to see what we can expect with Windows Live OneCare 2.5. They tell me that the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 release is mainly what they call an "under-the-hood" release. That means that we won't see any big  new features like the great OneCare Circle introduced in 2.0.  Going forward with the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta - continue to expect the improvements and changes to remain "under-the-hood" and not very noticeable in the UI.

In testing the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta, I noticed after installing it on one of my PCs and signing in with my Windows Live ID that contains my OneCare Subscription - it was not displaying my OneCare Circle. This was because I was running the non-Beta version of Windows Live OneCare on my other PCs. When signing in with your Windows Live ID that contains your OneCare Subscription in Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta - it creates a new subscription for testing purposes. In order for me to take advantage of my complete OneCare Circle, I will need to install Windows Live OneCare 2.5 on my other PCs. I don't have to worry because this won't affect my OneCare Subscription in any way and I can always uninstall Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta and go back to the non-Beta version of Windows Live OneCare.

Interesting in giving Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta a try? Just click here to go to Microsoft Connect and fill out the short survey. All feedback for Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta should be submitted via Microsoft Connect.

Remember - it's important to stay "green" with Windows Live OneCare. And by that, we mean keeping your OneCare status green ;-)

To help celebrate St. Patrick's Today - the Windows Live OneCare Team is kicking off a brand new campaign: Get Green Stay Green.

The Get Green Stay Green campaign is designed to make sure Windows Live OneCare users are staying "green" - meaning their PC Health Status. Here is Amy Barzdukas, Senior Direct here at Microsoft, to talk about Windows Live OneCare and keeping your PC safe. Amy leads the Windows Live OneCare Team.

Video: Microsoft Windows Live OneCare

I use Windows Live OneCare on my 3 personal home PCs - which are connected together in an OneCare Circle (you can have up to 3 PCs in an OneCare Circle). This lets me manage the PC Health for all my personal PCs. If any of my PCs in my OneCare Circle have their PC Health Status change to yellow or red, I can quickly see which PC it is and why. I can then do what is needed to bring that PC back to green. Keeping all my PCs green is very important to me. If any of my PCs slip into yellow or red - I fix it immediately.

I have a few tips to share from personal experience in keeping my PCs green in my OneCare Circle that you can use to help keep your own PCs green:

• Make sure you have your PCs backed up. Windows Live OneCare can backup your PCs automatically to a centralized point on your home network. In my case, I have all my home PCs backed up to my Windows Home Server which Windows Live OneCare detects.
• Have your firewall turned on. Windows Live OneCare can maintain and monitor your firewall - protecting your PC from attacks. Even though I'm behind a pretty secure router - I have the firewall turned on for all PCs in my OneCare Circle to add an extra level of protection.
• Make sure Protection Plus (malware definitions) are up to date. This ensures your PC is protected from the latest internet garbage.
• Do a PC Tune-up! Windows Live OneCare can do regular Tune-ups that can ensure your PC is running at its best.
• Make sure your PC has the latest updates from Windows Update. Important updates are key to ensuring your PC stays green.

Again, keeping my home PCs green is very important to me and the above tips help me to do so.

Do you have any tips for Windows Live OneCare and keeping your PC green? I'd love to hear them. Leave a comment below. I would be particularly interested in hearing about how you use Windows Live OneCare to ensure your PCs are backed up.

Users can also visit http://www.getgreenstaygreen.com/ and find out what it takes to keep their PC "green".

In Windows Vista, users can have an extensive System Health Report generated for them in helping troubleshoot performance and reliability issues on their PC or to see how healthy their PC is in general. For the average user, this probably won’t mean anything. But for me, I’m the type of user that really likes having the ability to create reports that tell me about my PC so I was really excited to find this ability in Windows Vista.

This evening I decided to generate a report on my main desktop PC for the first time and see what it says. To have a System Health Report generated:

1. Open Start Menu.
2. Right-click on “Computer” and click “Properties”.
3. In the System Properties window, click on your Windows Experience Index rating.
4. In the Performance Information and Tools window, under “Tasks” in the left-hand options pane click “Advanced Tools”.
5. Under Advanced Tools window choose “Generate a system health report” at the bottom.

The report generates after about 60 seconds of testing. Here is my System Health Report I generated this evening:

As you can see, any sort of errors or warnings for your system are displayed first at the top of the report. You can see from my report, my HP Photosmart C5100 Printer is disabled giving an error. This is because I recently switched my HP Photosmart C5100 from being connected to my PC via USB to being a network printer. I can ignore this error. Under warnings, my CPU was being consumed more than 50% by the EncoderUI.exe process. This is Microsoft Expression Encoder. I was encoding a HD video using Microsoft Expression Encoder at the time of running the System Health Check Report. Nothing to worry about there. Once the encoding was finished, I re-ran the report and my CPU usage dropped to an acceptable level.

In generating the System Health Report, a series of basic system and performance checks are completed. You can also check out your Software and Hardware configurations as well. The information in these tests is pretty detailed. Under Network and TCP you can see outbound and inbound IP traffic for example from when the report was generated or the exact amount of memory being used by processes.

You have the option to save your report as an HTML document if you would like. For me, if I need to save a report, I just print to an XPS document.

For folks using the latest version of Windows Live OneCare, you also have the ability to pull up monthly reports displaying information on PC scans, your monthly subscription, and firewall protection. By default, after a monthly tune-up is run your monthly report is displayed.

The new version of the Windows Live OneCare service is being made available today, running on both 32- and 64-bit Windows Vista systems (32-bit Windows XP SP2 is also supported). We built OneCare because we know that most homes have more than a single Read More……(read more)

The new version of the Windows Live OneCare service is being made available today, running on both 32- and 64-bit Windows Vista systems (32-bit Windows XP SP2 is also supported). 

We built OneCare because we know that most homes have more than a single computer (surely not news to you if you’re a reader of this blog), with PC security and maintenance being needs consistently expressed by both home users and small business owners.  A lot of these customers run PCs without basic anti-virus and anti-spyware protection, and even fewer perform performance-enhancing tasks such as disk defragmentation and regular system back-ups.  Furthermore, the plethora of digital photos stored on PCs means that more and more people are trusting their systems to archive digital memories, but given the general consumer’s lack of understanding of archival software, doing so becomes a risky proposition indeed.  And, when you factor in the prevalence of wireless networks in use in homes and small-businesses, you quickly get the picture that there is a lot of data at risk out there and customers are ill-prepared to take the necessary precautions to ensure it.

It’s not a question of being lazy, but rather having the right tool for the job.  That’s where easy-to-use OneCare comes in.  As a subscription service, all OneCare subscribers benefit from new updates as they are made available, including major releases such as this one.

The latest version of OneCare affords users these advantages:

• Home Network Management now further simplifies management of multi-PC environments, including support for printer sharing and one-click wireless network security implementation.
  
• Performance Plus enhancements consist of proactive system recommendations designed to improve the computing experience, as well as a monthly reporting regimen tallying the actions taken by OneCare in the last month plus recommended actions for all covered PCs.
  
• Back-up and Restore now enables central configuration and monitoring of back-ups for all covered PCs, with all data being archived to a central location.

A free 90-day trial of OneCare can be downloaded http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm.  A 1-year subscription and maintenance for up to 3 PCs costs only US$49.95. All current Windows Live OneCare subscribers benefit from new features as they are made available, including major updates such as this one.

Click here to also read PressPass’s Q&A with Windows Live OneCare Director Amy Barzdukas.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more information on receiving the new Windows Live OneCare release.