News MS releases free Security Essentials

Just tried it: it bloody isn't 6Mb, try more like 60! But I'm on XP without Windows Defender installed, and it appears to share some processes (MsMpEng.exe for instance), and it's this that's 60Mb. It's currently the highest memory using process I have open. Worth bearing in mind for none Defender users (not that there'll be many after Win7 comes out)

 

All operating systems have bugs (which some call holes). There is no joke in the fact that MS offers anti-virus. They have in fact provided anti-malware tools for a long time and you have Windows Defender in Vista.

And this has been a much less of a problem since UAC entered the stage. UAC saved my ass one time (and not some anti-virus software). Also most of the time I don't really need anti-virus because I don't download crap. But I do run certain hmm.hmm software from time to time which requires me to have anti-virus installed. Previously I've run a system with no security software installed whatsoever for months without issues. Call it good luck, or good wisdom.

 

It really needs a custom actions property after a scan is completed. Like oh I don't know, shutdown or run an external program like any respectable anti-virus. Besides that it seems pretty nice.

 

Microsoft security is a joke. It always has been. They've always had a policy of backwards-compatibility is more important than security. Given Windows' roots as a stand-alone OS devoid of a network stack, this policy has caused numerous problems and many man-hours of lost productivity due to viral infections.

Microsoft finally broke free of their 'backwards-compatibility' mantra with Vista. But Vista is widely recognised as a dog of an OS and many users got fed up with the frequency of UAC pop-ups so they switched it off and, in doing so, threw out the single most important security feature.

Microsoft is soon to release Windows7 which they say (as they always say with every release) "is the most secure Windows yet". It's all relative. The exciting thing about W7 for the Black Hat community is 'XP Mode'. Microsoft has recognised the embarrasment that was UAC and fine-tuned it so that it's not so annoying and users won't switch it off. That's great, but what it's not telling users is that XP-Mode has left the back door unlocked.

Now Microsoft is coming out with its own anti-viral software. Oh great. It takes them over 12 months to patch ActiveX security holes in IE "but this is different, this time we really are focusing on security". Give me a break. Security is a process, not a product. And Microsoft has consistently proved to itself that it can continue to sell its products without having to worry about devoting any serious developer effort to security issues.

Security Essentials is, again, just Microsoft paying lip service to security concerns.

 

this is rubish,
ive had it since the beta

it is programed to use up less than 50% cpu capacity
and its as slow as hell

to scan my 50gb hdd partition on a sata 2 drive took 3 bloodyt hours

to scan that and my data partition that only has 250gb on it would take 12hours

come on microsoft you can do better than this
it is painstacinly slow its a good antivirus program except this only use this if you dont have a lot of data or you are willing to leave it to scan just before you go to work or school then select what to do when you get back

 

It just makes sense. Its their OS afterall. And they did something right here. It is lighweight, gives good protection and integrates well with the OS.
It is just what the home user wants. As for anti-virus companies. What did they expect? Their lucky enough that Microsoft hasn't integrated this into their OS by default. Something that in my opinion makes sense. It is about providing a more secured OS and protecting their reputation. Other companies do that. Why can't Microsoft do that? Microsoft has been flamed in the past for not providing enough security in their OS and they have focused on that for quite some time. Anti-virus companies may criticize this move, but fact is, they have been taking advantage of a market that shouldn't exist in the first place. Their focus should always be in the enterprise level. The home user should have enough basic protection with what the OS company can provide.

 

good for MS for trying atleast to be honest, since MS did say they are not competing with anything, and only released this to help their customers, you are still free to download anything else, its not like MS is forcing you to use it if you really feel MS security is a joke (tbh nowadays everything has a security joke attached to their software) I dont see the reason to shove this product up MS's ass

 

Sounds good to me. Defender works fine and McAfee SecurityCenter drives me mad. Do you reckon it will use less sys res than McA? Can you get it for XP?

 

It is well known that Norton and Mcafee products are extremely bloated and end up grinding the computer to a halt rather than help the computer. In my opinion it is best to steer clear of the "security suites" as these tend to be really heavy on system resources. Try and buy security products from companies that are specialised in a perticular area, best of breed software if you will.

 

Norton's been doing better lately, however they're still crap

I'm rather liking the MS suite, got it on 2 of the comps at home and it's a lot less load on the system than AVG. +rep to MS

 

Just removed McAffee Security suite and installed this. Shaved about 30 seconds off my boot time! So far so good.