JeffBolden.net Ramblings from a IT Professional and NetSec Geek

New Microsoft A/V Out of Beta – Suprisingly great!

For those of you not aware, Microsoft has been quitely testing the successor to their discontinued OneCare AntiVirus product, named Microsoft Security Essentials. Seems that it is out of beta as of today and is available for free download. I've actually been running this as a beta on several of my machines here at the secret bunker, and have been pleasantly surprised on how good a product it is. I'm a big fan of the free Avast! and AVG home products for their small footprint and excellent detection capabilities, but thought I would put SE through it's paces to see how it worked. I'm my view, MS really hit the target with Security Essentials for the home and small business user. It just works, with a small memory footprint and no noticeable processor hit unlike some A/V clients out there (I'm looking at you McAfee...).

Scanning is slower than some, but it seems to do a good job of detecting malware, in one or two instances alerting on a few things that some of the the others seemed to miss. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but it just works.

So, will it be taking the place of Avast on my home machines? The jury's still out, but it's the first time I've even considered anything else but Avast or AVG in years, and that's saying something. =) I think for a lot of my family and friends, it's exactly what they need and will probably start using it instead. Besides, free is always good... =)

Take a look and then post your thoughts! You can grab it at the Security Essentials site.