The service will provide virus and spyware scanning, firewall management, anti-phishing measures, performance tuneups (eg, disk defragmentation) and backup for users of Windows XP SP2 or Vista.

OneCare will be available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Symantec's Norton 360 service offering broadly similar facilities went into beta last November, with a Vista-compatible beta appearing just before Christmas. The release version is expected by March.{moscomment}