Microsoft Unleashes Free Antivirus Comments

Ironically however, in contrast to services such as a web browser (which is a specific application in it's own right) system security is ALL about trying to fix that which Microsoft have arguably made wrong in the first place. There is something very ironic about MS offering anti-virus software, and that irony was verging on abusive back when they were selling anti-virus software.
This should be packaged with win7 in my view, or at least in a sense of 4 or 5 other AV security packages, which the user selects at first boot.

Hmmm... hopefully this will be adequate for netbooks. As long as it's not complete crap then maybe it'll just need a little backup from no-script.

I'm using it on Windows 7 and it runs extremely well. It's simply set up and forget. It seems to be able to update itself through proxy servers automatically (unlike the Beta version) and memory usage as reported through task manager is only 4mb.

Not worth replacing your Internet security "All in One" Solutions, but for basic antivirus, I'd trust this.

Despite not gaining a lot of market-share, OneCare wasn't so bad for home users, since it was simple and didn't hog too much in the way of system resources.

It just kind of got on quietly with what it was supposed to do, without scaring novices with FireWall alerts all the time.

I installed it for friends and family, simply because I could remotely see alerts when their virus definitions were out of date etc and basically keep an eye on things.

However, for power-users, the lack of a 64-bit version was a serious slip-up - and it lacked a lot of the tweakability of the Suites from Norton, ZoneAlarm, Kaspersky, McAfee, etc

I've used the beta of this in place of AVG free, where a lightweight, fit and forget solution was needed and I've come away impressed. For basic anti virus needs it's fine.

Well... I installed AVG about 2 years ago and havn't thought about viruses since.

So, why should I bother with this one?

What reviewer fails to mention is that Microsoft Security Essentials is based on the same core scanning engine used by Microsoft's Forefront line of products.

Forefront is a proven certified antivirus product. Forefront Security received the latest CESG Claims Tested Mark (CCTM) award for integrity protection and also achieved the ICSA Labs Certification, VB100 award, and West Coast Labs’ Checkmark Certification, meeting key criteria for protection against malware. Forefront Client Security was named a finalist for the Info Security 2008 Global Excellence in anti malware solutions. I personally dont care how long it takes to scan stuff or its resource footprint as long as it protects me and doesn't slow down my pc!

Every review I've read of the beta comes out well. Maybe making comments about it based on OneCare are a bit premature ;)

Errr....if they have spent time making an antivirus product, analysing viruses/trojans etc, finding out how to thwart them....why don't they then go an just fix the security holes they exploit? Then one wouldn't need the anti-virus in the first place...or at least it could be scaled down. All seems a bit mad.

I mean imagine if apple had come out with a virus checker, people would laugh their heads off and call it a security nightmare.

Everyone who used the beta loved it, and commented on how different is it to OneCare.
So much so that it is used to replace established packages.

I personally am going to try it tonight!

@MSIC: "Ironically however, in contrast to services such as a web browser (which is a specific application in it's own right) system security is ALL about trying to fix that which Microsoft have arguably made wrong in the first place. "

yes, because no other platform / OS gets viruses or hacked in anyway

@MSIC and haim: I'm pretty sure it is a lot more complicated than that

I put AVG on my Win7 Acer Aspire One and found my boot up time turned to a snails pace, so removed it. If this is quicker, then its good for me i say.

What to do. AVG does work fine for me. But you can never go wrong with more speed. Reason I use Chrome even though it's woefully under featured compared to the competition. Downloading now then...

working great for me it's very fast and integrates well and it doesn't shout at me for not having automatic updates fully on like the old onecare did