Live OneCare mostly bombed out because you had to pay for it—Morro is free, and if it’s good enough to protect people against the most common nastyware, who’s gonna 40 bucks to Symantec for the latest Norton? People like cheap stuff if it’s good, but free stuff even better if it’s decent—so Symantec’s Consumer division president Janice Chaffin crowing to Reuters that “A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected” is highly amusing.

The one real saving grace for antivirus software makers is that Microsoft isn’t bundling Morro with Windows—probably only because they can’t, what with the constant threat of antitrust issues that in part lead them to yank other native apps out of the OS. I’d argue that security is a pretty fundamental component of an OS, so if there’s any app Microsoft should be allowed to bundle, it’s security software.

Maybe it is better this way—you’ll be able to download it for free if you really want it, like other Windows Live apps. But then I wonder if a bundled Morro could’ve saved Adam, so we’d still have one more cranky Windows guy in the world. [Reuters]

The key aspect of this handset though isn’t its solid build, but its integration with social media tools like Facebook, MySpace and Instant Messenger. And once again, it does the job amazingly well. Not only is there an integrated iPhone app on the phone, but using 3’s network, it will keep you constantly connected to the service, updating you when you receive a message or when someone updates their status just like you’re receiving a text message.

On top of that, the phone will pull down your Facebook friends’ contact info and merge it with the contacts in your phone, including profile pics. It does the same thing for Skype, too, and presumably MySpace, although I didn’t (and won’t ever) have a MySpace account to check it out. Photos taken on the INQ1’s 3.2 megapixel camera can be directly uploaded to your social media accounts as well.

It’s not the perfect phone though – browsing the web is as painful as every other phone with a 2.2-inch screen, and even though Facebook, MySpace, Skype and Windows Live IM are included, there’s no Twitter, Friendfeed or other social networking programs. There’s also no Wi-Fi, although the phone comes with 3’s excellent data rates, which should get most people through a month of status updates and IM conversations.

Battery life was also extremely surprising – even with both Facebook and Skype running in the background, the phone was still kicking on after a few days use. Hell, one week, when I didn’t use it at all, but left it switched on, it managed to last for a full 5 days.

This isn’t a phone many of us will ever buy, but for the teenage demographic, it’s practically the Holy Grail. At $179 on a $29 prepaid cap it’s extremely affordable, it’s well built, has a 2-year warranty and is more socially connected than the PM on Twitter. If only all cheap phones were so appealing.

It also talks about lofty goals like making this for “individuals around the world, designed to help them stay connected…and protected.” We read this as forcing people to onto an online system so lousily managed that, according to their own employees, Microsoft has to go and buy Yahoo in order to fix it. [ZDNet]