Microsoft Security Essentials is now officially open for FREE

[SamSaveMax]

Microsoft Security Essentials is now officially open for FREE!

I've been using for awhile. It's a great application.

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/default.aspx

 

[thaclassikz]

How do you like it so far? I'm trying this out now, and see if its better than free Avast.

 

[SamSaveMax]

Honestly, I love it since day one I used as a beta.
Nice a simple interface. Automatically updated with Windows Update or can be done manually.
It blocks and clean many good calls while surfing.
Surprisingly, it identified "thingies" within computer other securities missed.

 

[thaclassikz]

Did a full scan with MSE, found no threats, guess free Avast wasn't too bad. I'll stick with this for a little while. It's a smart move for Microsoft to finally offer a free antivirus.

 

[computergeek]

Very true

 

[JDawggS316]

Perfect timing. I was looking for an antivirus program and was hesistant about purchasing one.

It sounds good thus far so I'll be giving it a shot.

 

[JDawggS316]

I just downloaded and installed MSE and so far it's working just great.

I had to disable the real time scanning of files and folders because it severly interferred with Deskscapes and Objectdock. It made things very slow and choppy whereas other anti-virus programs haven't.

 

[thaclassikz]

Real time scanning is kind of important.........

 

[TollhouseFrank]

Real time scanning is kind of important.........

not really.....

well, let me qualify that.

For the average-joe user? Yes.

For the security-nut techie that is overly anal-retentive about what websites he visits and prevents scripts, etc. from running?

No. Just a system scan once every 2-3 weeks and usually never more than a handful of things show up (99.99% of the time are tracking cookies).

 

[bLack0ut]

not really.....

well, let me qualify that.

For the average-joe user? Yes.

For the security-nut techie that is overly anal-retentive about what websites he visits and prevents scripts, etc. from running?

No. Just a system scan once every 2-3 weeks and usually never more than a handful of things show up (99.99% of the time are tracking cookies).

Agreed. Especially if that security-nut techie is running behind a locked down firewall.

 

[Randyman...]

Looking good over here. It will replace AVG and Avast on friend's systems and even on my Laptop . It does seem dreadfully slow when running an on-demand scan (spends LOTS of time on exe's and compressed files), but I'm taking that as a sign of thoroughness, not as a form of poor coding or whatever. It will NOT give you the annoying nag "Upgrade to PRO" pop-ups, and does not cry wolf over tracking cookies and crap to make itself seem useful.

FYI - It does disable Windows Defender by design. Other AV's also recommend disabling Defender - MSE does it for you...


Check this down-to-Earth review from Sunbelt (a competitor):

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/thoughts-on-mse.html

 

[hokiealumnus]

Well, took the plunge tonight. Avira apparently did a decent job as well, MSE found nothing. Will try this out for a while, see how it does. Ars Technica seemed to like it, so I figured it can only be so bad.

 

[kovboi]

Check this down-to-Earth review from Sunbelt (a competitor):

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/thoughts-on-mse.html

thanks, that was an interesting read (particularly since i've been using vipre). one thing the review mentions is that MSE does not have email functionality. can anyone confirm this? the MS site provides no details whatsoever.

 

[ratbuddy]

Just dumped AVG and Spybot for MSE. I think this has also solved a problem I was having with IE8 not opening new windows/tabs. We'll see.