PC Health Check 2.0: not as useful as it looks

At first sight F-Secure’s Health Check 2.0 looks to a useful addition to a PC owners box of troubleshooting tricks. It’s OK, but it is nothing to get excited about.

The online application is a Java program that works with Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer to investigate a computer’s security status then report back on potential risks.

On the plus side it is free, quick and simple to use. The code loads directly from the Health Check web page and after the obligatory rigmarole of accepting terms and conditions it takes next to no time to download even on my sometimes erratic broadband connection. I clocked the first download at seven seconds.

Once leaded the software steps through a familiar wizard-style process with four stages. the first stage happens without your involvement. It checks you have anti-virus, anti-spyware and a firewall installed and up-to-date.

Clicking on the ‘next’ button moves things along to stage two which investigates back-up – we’ll look closer at this in a moment. The third stage checks to see if certain key programs are up-to-date. The last stage is a summary screen with links to ’solutions’ to identified problems.

So, even if everything was perfectly hunky-dory, which it isn’t, PC Health Check 2.0 is of limited functionality. For a start there are many alternatives that do the same job either as well or better. For example, Secunia offers the free Online Software Inspector and the more complete downloadable Secunia Personal Software Inspector.

But my big problem with Health Check 2.0 is it mainly exists as a crude promotional device for F-Secure’s products and services. It’s compromised by its commercial function.

Allow me to expand on this. My computer failed the second stage back-up test. The software told me it didn’t find any back-up. This is wrong there are three back-up applications on my computer. I back up regularly to an external disk and to a server.

When I clicked on the Health Check 2.0 ’solve’ button to troubleshoot the ‘problem’ found by the software I got a message about protecting my “valuable content” with F-Secure Online Backup. And a link to the F-Secure store.

I live in New Zealand. My computer has almost a terabyte of data. Although I’m theoretically on an unlimited broadband plan, but with shaped bandwidth for almost the entire working day. In other words, online back-up simply isn’t a realistic option. And yet PC Health Check tells me it is.

My instinct says if the application gets this advice wrong – what use is the rest of its information?

Lastly, when the program finishes, there’s the opportunity to register an email address with F-Secure. Now why would I want to do that?

For an alternative view see F-Secure refreshes online PC Health Check by Stephen Withers at iTWire. His found other shortcomings, but reached a similar conclusion.

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