Microsoft Security Essentials.
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We use it at work and I have it running on my PC at home. The price is right, bang on the money, namely, free. I guess it won't rank up there in the top-drawer of AV products but it seems to do the job but how well some of you folks might know. Compared to paid for products, are you getting what pay for? The big-hitters in the AV marketplace would no doubt try and manipulate you with all sorts of horror stories that only a purchased product would protect you from, but is MSE a good product?
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
I have had great results with MSE. I do a manual update lookup several times a day (only takes a few seconds), run a full scan EVERY day and I wait anxiously for the second Tuesday of every months big update that includes the freshest version of the anti-malware goodies. I find it lightweight, unobtrusive, and it never wants to sell me the next version.
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It actually stands up better than you might think. I'm very impressed with it. Unfortunately the license isn't nearly as agreeable for corporate use or I'd try to push it.
They have recently changed the terms of service to allow it to be used for small businesses with less than 10 computers, which is a rather welcome change. If you are any larger then that you will probably be going with a centrally managed paid solution anyway me thinks.
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MSE is only free in a business environment for up to 10 users. Anything more than that and you are violating the EULA. So while it may be "free", it's only up to a certain point.
"The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?" -- Oracle CEO Larry Ellison
I think most organizations with more than 10 machines will likely be going for a centrally managed solution anyway, so I don't know that it's a big problem either way. It's nice that they changed the EULA to allow businesses to run it at all, I remember that wasn't the case a year or two ago.
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Don't know how well Security Essentials can protect a user that insists on downloading files from dubious sources, but then again can any of the AV products protect from that? I know SE works much better as far as memory usage, system resources and annoying pop up messages than any paid software I have ever used. To me Symantec and Mcafee have become almost as bad as a virus themselves, I would never use any of their products again.
wakerunner wrote:
Symantec and Mcafee have become almost as bad as a virus themselves
McAfee seems to be oriented to murder any PC it's installed on. Not for the first time has McAfee been accused of murder.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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I have had great results with MSE. I do a manual update lookup several times a day (only takes a few seconds), run a full scan EVERY day and I wait anxiously for the second Tuesday of every months big update that includes the freshest version of the anti-malware goodies. I find it lightweight, unobtrusive, and it never wants to sell me the next version.
ErrolErrol wrote:
do a manual update lookup several times
Is there anyway to automate something like that? I usually only update every second blue moon and then only if I remember.
ErrolErrol wrote:
un a full scan EVERY day and I wait anxiously
I do that once in a while; every third blue moon. Maybe I'm too lax in my approach.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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We use it at work and I have it running on my PC at home. The price is right, bang on the money, namely, free. I guess it won't rank up there in the top-drawer of AV products but it seems to do the job but how well some of you folks might know. Compared to paid for products, are you getting what pay for? The big-hitters in the AV marketplace would no doubt try and manipulate you with all sorts of horror stories that only a purchased product would protect you from, but is MSE a good product?
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
I've been using it for years myself and always put it on friend's systems. So far no reports of any problems: I sure haven't had any.
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I haven't used anything else since it became free, and haven't had any problems at all. The real horrors out there are Norton and McAfee, as I've had many experiences of those products completely destroying a Windows machine. Unless something drastically changes, I won't be wasting money on AV products ever again. As someone else pointed out, the big players are, in fact, viruses themselves that manage somehow to convince victims to pay for them.
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger Wright wrote:
I haven't used anything else since it became free, and haven't had any problems at all. The real horrors out there are Norton and McAfee, as I've had many experiences of those products completely destroying a Windows machine. Unless something drastically changes, I won't be wasting money on AV products ever again. As someone else pointed out, the big players are, in fact, viruses themselves that manage somehow to convince victims to pay for them.
Interesting you should call the AV products "viruses". I've used MSE for years and it works just fine. OTOH I've seen more systems bogged down with Norton and McAfee than I can count. The amount of memory and resource those products take and the yearly "subscription". Too bad. Back in the early PC days, I used Norton Tools to fix all kinds of problems. Norton got to be "too big for their britches" I guess. Offhand, my thought has been for years that they've created a "self eating water melon". I think the AV industry actually creates these things then sells products to get rid of them. I don't have any proof of that, but I've seen enough corruption in business to think just that.
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I'll jump on the bandwagon as well, never had a problem using MSE, Norton on the other hand was a complete fustercluck! X|
Norton used to make good diagnostic tools (back in the early PC days). I used them all-the-time. Then they got into this self-feeding AV market. I think it started out with the purpose of fixing problems, now it's just a business. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually create many of the threats that they "solve" with their product!
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ErrolErrol wrote:
do a manual update lookup several times
Is there anyway to automate something like that? I usually only update every second blue moon and then only if I remember.
ErrolErrol wrote:
un a full scan EVERY day and I wait anxiously
I do that once in a while; every third blue moon. Maybe I'm too lax in my approach.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
MSE has a command line interface: mpcmdrun.exe -Scan -ScanType 1 -SignatureUpdate is the command I use. I have the Windows Task Scheduler set to run this 15 minutes after startup and if there is a network connection available. You will have to change the path depending on the version of Windows and MSE/Defender you have. All paths will be under C:\Program Files"
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Roger Wright wrote:
I haven't used anything else since it became free, and haven't had any problems at all. The real horrors out there are Norton and McAfee, as I've had many experiences of those products completely destroying a Windows machine. Unless something drastically changes, I won't be wasting money on AV products ever again. As someone else pointed out, the big players are, in fact, viruses themselves that manage somehow to convince victims to pay for them.
Interesting you should call the AV products "viruses". I've used MSE for years and it works just fine. OTOH I've seen more systems bogged down with Norton and McAfee than I can count. The amount of memory and resource those products take and the yearly "subscription". Too bad. Back in the early PC days, I used Norton Tools to fix all kinds of problems. Norton got to be "too big for their britches" I guess. Offhand, my thought has been for years that they've created a "self eating water melon". I think the AV industry actually creates these things then sells products to get rid of them. I don't have any proof of that, but I've seen enough corruption in business to think just that.
CodeBubba wrote:
they've created a "self eating water melon"
I can't disagree. Perhaps they once were viable products, but now they're intrusive, performance-shackling nightmares that are as likely to destroy a machine as the very threat they are ostensibly designed to fight. MSE works great, and I'll be sticking with it for a long time to come. It's probably the only product Microsoft has gotten right since Windows 2000.
Will Rogers never met me.
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MSE has a command line interface: mpcmdrun.exe -Scan -ScanType 1 -SignatureUpdate is the command I use. I have the Windows Task Scheduler set to run this 15 minutes after startup and if there is a network connection available. You will have to change the path depending on the version of Windows and MSE/Defender you have. All paths will be under C:\Program Files"
Thank you. I will try it later this morning.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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CodeBubba wrote:
they've created a "self eating water melon"
I can't disagree. Perhaps they once were viable products, but now they're intrusive, performance-shackling nightmares that are as likely to destroy a machine as the very threat they are ostensibly designed to fight. MSE works great, and I'll be sticking with it for a long time to come. It's probably the only product Microsoft has gotten right since Windows 2000.
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger Wright wrote:
I can't disagree. Perhaps they once were viable products, but now they're intrusive, performance-shackling nightmares that are as likely to destroy a machine as the very threat they are ostensibly designed to fight. MSE works great, and I'll be sticking with it for a long time to come. It's probably the only product Microsoft has gotten right since Windows 2000.
Well, I wouldn't take it quite that far! MS has come out with some excellent stuff: VS2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2003, Windows 7: all of 'em are really excellent and I've built my systems around them. Yes, MSE is an excellent no-fuss system - it's always worked and doesn't bog the machines down. Norton & McAfee - It's too bad they went the way they did. I won't touch either of them again and always pull them off machines I configure.