Previews - Hands on with Microsoft Security Essentials: anti-virus done right?

[HEXUS]

A beta release of Microsoft's freeware anti-virus solution is here, we take a quick first look.

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[nichomach]

Well, I suppose we won't know about "done right" until we get some evidence of detection rates?

[Zak33]

so, let's get this straight?

Everyone with XP/Vista will be able to use this once it's launched, for free, and it doesn't drag the PC to a Norton like crawl?

[kopite]

Sounds good to me

[lodore]

@nichomach,
it uses the same engine and signatures as forefront. see the detection rate at http://www.av-comparatives.org/
@Zak, correct. The thing is it doesn't have any management software so companies will pretty much be forced in to buying forefront or a third party solution.

btw norton 2009 doesn't make a system crawl either. from 2008 version onwards (i think thats correct) over 80 percent of the product was rewritten to be light on resources. still wouldn't trust norton thou. I will test Microsoft security essentials when i have some time. atm for free protection I recommend avast. for paid i recommend Kaspersky or f-secure.

FYI atm:
This beta is available only to customers in the United States, Israel (English only), People's Republic of China (Simplified Chinese only) and Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese only).

[Platinum]

Nice, will give this a bash, had to uninstall AVG free as it seemed to be causing my system to crash.

[lodore]

Nice, will give this a bash, had to uninstall AVG free as it seemed to be causing my system to crash.

also concider avast.

[Platinum]

To be fair I am getting on well enough without AV software atm, theres not really a need for it unless you use P2P a lot or browse dodgy websites, Most sensible users should be able to run there PC without AV fine.
When was the last time you found a virus on your PC? gotta be around 4 years now for me...

[Lee H]

The term "Microsoft Security" used to be an oxymoron didn't it ?

It looks good and if this stops all those " I've got <insert current popular virus name> on my PC" phone calls at 9pm then I'm all for it being free

[lodore]

To be fair I am getting on well enough without AV software atm, theres not really a need for it unless you use P2P a lot or browse dodgy websites, Most sensible users should be able to run there PC without AV fine.
When was the last time you found a virus on your PC? gotta be around 4 years now for me...

for me personally 5 years or more.

the problem comes when legit websites get hacked.
safe surfing wont help there.
but if your up to date with patches for OS,software and browser plugins for example java etc the exploits shouldnt work.

[Irien]

Having just installed the beta, I can't see any reference to email protection. This would seem to be a pretty major omission compared to AVG which the article refers to it replacing. AVG had an email proxy which would intercept POP fetches (even from virtual systems!) from any app, and proxy-scan the incomming mails. It was pretty amazing doing email on a non-windows virtual OS, and having AVG background scanning the mail-traffic!

Of course, I may be missing something, but otherwise it seems a competent program, and not to intensive or invasive (an important factor!).

[shadowmaster]

To be fair I am getting on well enough without AV software atm, theres not really a need for it unless you use P2P a lot or browse dodgy websites, Most sensible users should be able to run there PC without AV fine.
When was the last time you found a virus on your PC? gotta be around 4 years now for me...

Recently 6 months ago, a mate came around to print some work on my laser from his USB. At that time I was in-between AV softwares as my subscription had run out and I was looking for a new one. What I was unaware was that his USB was full of so much crap, that it took a full format and re installation of windows to sort my pc out . Moral of the story, if it was just me that used my pc I'd probably be fine without a AV, however since I have family and friends regularly use my pc I cant take the risk.

[macbeth1959]

Hopefully this will have a 'knock-on' effect and end the gravy-train of fear enjoyed by security firms at present. I tire of those words 'YOUR COMPUTER IS AT RISK'!!!

Well done Microsoft

[fat_chris]

When was the last time you found a virus on your PC? gotta be around 4 years now for me...

A couple of days ago when my friend plugged his external hard drive into my pc, avast popped up saying that autorun.inf was trying to run a trojan or something. This procedure is quite common and so many trojans or what-not could be on unprotected windows machines and they wouldn't even know it.

[aidanjt]

The term "Microsoft Security" used to be an oxymoron didn't it ?

Still is.

It looks good and if this stops all those " I've got <insert current popular virus name> on my PC" phone calls at 9pm then I'm all for it being free

I occasionally get those types of phone calls, even on Linux installations.

[scaryjim]

The term "Microsoft Security" used to be an oxymoron didn't it ?

Until a couple of weeks ago one of the most amusing things I'd seen on a computer was when my wife started up Age of Empires and Windows Firewall blocked it, saying "Do you trust the publisher of this software?"!!

That was beaten recently though, when Windows Firewall popped up and blocked some features of.... Internet Explorer.

I kid you not.