Windows Live OneCare will be available for customers to purchase after the end of this month. In mid-November 2008 Microsoft announced a shift in its security strategy and it plans to deliver a free security offering to users worldwide by the end of 2009. At that time, the Redmond company also mentioned that retail sales of the Windows Live OneCare subscription service would no longer be offered come June 30, 2009. But there is a catch; while retail sales will be killed off at the end of this month, OneCare subscriptions will continue to be sold directly by Microsoft, a spokesperson for the company has confirmed.

“It’s true that Microsoft will discontinue retail sales of OneCare on 30 June, 2009 so you won’t find it in stores after that date, but consumers will still be able to purchase the product after 30 June directly from Microsoft at Live OneCare,” the company representative explained.

Still, fact is that all sales of Windows Live OneCare along with the subscriptions themselves will be discontinued in the future. When it announced the imminent death of OneCare in 2008, Microsoft did not provide customers with a deadline for when they should get ready to completely jump ship to another security solution. Things are that much different from then. “No specific date has been given yet for when all sales of the product will cease,” the Microsoft spokesperson added.

The software giant will replace OneCare with codename Morro, delivering free security to Windows users worldwide. A specific availability date for Morro was not announced, but Microsoft is targeting the second half of this year. The successor of Windows Live OneCare will be designed to integrate seamlessly with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It is expected that with the general availability of Morro Microsoft will kill Windows Live OneCare completely, once all subscriptions will expire.