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    Ok, now that I've read some of the horror stories of simply getting to pay for this product. I'll need some advice here.

    I am the "resident geek" of the family. We're all adults now and live separately (not one home). I want to purchase One Care for my siblings. We're an "international family", I'm in the US, they're not.

    I want this to be pain-free for them, else scrub the notion.

    So, how do I go about doing this:

    - do I pay using my own LIVE account (US) and pay?
    - so do I get a key of some sort that I share with them?
    - based on some really bad horror stories here regarding "billing country", will my siblings have activation issues?
    - do they just go to the ACTIVATE section on the one care site? Although I think this is specifically for "boxed" versions...
    - What happens if they have Live IDs that aren't US?

    Advice greatly appreciated....

    I've read of the comments and experiences here. It's quite astounding to see how much difficulty **customers** are going through...for what should be a trivial task....yes, I'm in IT and am very aware of other multi-licensing options with other products. Am giving OneCare a shot simply because think what I'm used to can be a bit overkill for them - too restrictive with prompts containing terms that even I, a seasoned IT dude, can go "huh"?

    Hope the above isn't such a "challenge" to do...for the sake of usability...and based on some threads..sanity...


    Wednesday, June 18, 2008 1:16 AM

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    Much of the activation and subscription confusion is caused by the slight differences in the activation process between online purchases and retail CD purchases. If you purchase One Care online there is no product key. All purchase information is linked to your Live ID.

    If you purchase a One Care retail CD there is a product key which is used only once to set up your subscription. Thereafter, to install One Care, re-install One Care, or to add One Care to another computer, only the Live ID is used.

    I'm not sure about sharing your subscription. If you create a new Live ID and password to purchase a One Care subscription,  someone in another location could download and activate One Care using that same Live ID and password. This should work but I have no way to confirm that it will.

     

    Wednesday, June 18, 2008 4:13 AM
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    Much of the activation and subscription confusion is caused by the slight differences in the activation process between online purchases and retail CD purchases. If you purchase One Care online there is no product key. All purchase information is linked to your Live ID.

    If you purchase a One Care retail CD there is a product key which is used only once to set up your subscription. Thereafter, to install One Care, re-install One Care, or to add One Care to another computer, only the Live ID is used.

    I'm not sure about sharing your subscription. If you create a new Live ID and password to purchase a One Care subscription,  someone in another location could download and activate One Care using that same Live ID and password. This should work but I have no way to confirm that it will.

     

    Wednesday, June 18, 2008 4:13 AM
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    Hi JimR1:

     

    Thanks so much for your explanation. That's the scenario I envisioned too...and well, I "jumped in" and made the purchase. I'll soon find out if that was folly....the first sign would be a barrage of international calls at some ungodly hour....and if it causes too much grief, I just know they'll all be "collect"!  

     

    Guess I'll have to keep Citrix/GoTo within arms reach for a couple of days...

     

    You know, this would have been so much simpler if MS just did this the way they did SkyDrive (shared folders). You designate who can access folders and give roles to them. Simple, painless. OneCare, I believe, is so much more mature (release date-wise) than SkyDrive that it's really puzzling why things are done the way they are now....I mean it is by design a multi-user product/service/license.....yet a major part of it, getting it to work, is "single user centric"...sigh.....

     

    Whatever effort it would have taken to "lock down" that mechanism (mitigate wrong email addresses, etc.) since this is a paid service after all, would probably cost less than all the support costs being incurred by all this confusion...

     

    Thanks again!

    Ed

     

    Wednesday, June 18, 2008 4:45 AM
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    You are welcome Ed. I hope this works for you. I am the family resident geek as well and for me the best feature of One Care is the dramatic decrease of "support" calls I get.

     

    Wednesday, June 18, 2008 5:10 AM
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