When we looked at the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials in 2009, we were impressed with its clean, easy-to-use interface, but less so with its sluggish scan speed. This still holds true for Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0; alas, it hasn't kept pace with newer antivirus products when it comes to detecting malware. Updated December 8 2010.
Microsoft Security Essentials is well designed and easy to use. Installation is simple and straightforward, although it will verify whether your copy of Windows is legit along the way. Once you install it and open it, you'll be greeted by a thoughtfully designed main screen. This screen has four tabs: Home (which shows status information, scan controls, and an update button if your virus definitions are out of date); Update; History (which logs all of the malware cleaned from your system); and Settings.
Microsoft Security Essentials has a green/yellow/red colour-coded status bar that runs across the top of the window - as is common in antivirus software - and the Home tab gives you more details as to your PC's protection status.
While not terrible, Microsoft Security Essentials lagged behind the top performers in our recent antivirus roundup at detecting malware using traditional scanner-based detection methods (which rely predominantly on malware definition files), detecting 92.7 percent of samples. This was the second-lowest score of the free antivirus products (Comodo's free Internet Security Premium was slightly worse, detecting 92.4 percent of samples), and is well behind the top performers, which detected over 99 percent of malware samples.
Microsoft Security Essentials logged the lowest score in tests to see how well it could block real, live malware attacks. In these real-world attack tests, it completely blocked 64 percent of attacks, and partially blocked an additional 8 percent of attacks. No free antivirus product was able to fully block all attacks, but Comodo scored a 96 percent full-blocking rate. This is a good test to determine how well security products can block brand-new, still-unknown malware.
On the other hand, once an infection is on your PC, Microsoft Security Essentials will do a relatively good job at cleaning it up: It detected all infections on our test PC, and removed all active components of an infection 70 percent of the time - about average for the products we reviewed. And it managed to completely clean up 50 percent of infections - tops among the contenders.
Microsoft Security Essentials' scan speeds are among the slowest among products we looked at, as well. It completed our on-demand scan test - which simulates how long it will take to manually scan 4.5GB of data - in 3 minutes, 24 seconds, the second slowest performer in this test. The top performer, Avira Antivir Personal, completed the test in 87 seconds. Security Essentials was also on the slow side in on-access scan speed tests, which judge how well a product can scan files as they're opened or saved to disk: It did the deed in 5 minutes, 41 seconds, a full 2 minutes behind the leader.
Despite the slow scan speed, Microsoft Security Essentials had a fairly low impact on overall PC performance. It added less than 1 second to startup times in our tests, and finished most of our other system speed tests with better-than-average scores.
Download now:
- Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0.2 [32-bit]
- Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0.2 for Windows XP [32-bit]
- Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0.2 [64-bit]
Verdict
There's a lot to like about Microsoft Security Essentials, but we were a little disappointed by its malware detection and attack blocking - after all, antivirus software is only as good as its ability to keep your PC protected. Hopefully, Microsoft will bolster Security Essentials' threat-blocking capabilities in a future update, but until then, you'd be better served by going with something having better detection capabilities, such as Avira AntiVir Personal.
NEXT: our review of Microsoft Security Essentials, from 2009 >>
CLICK HERE FOR VERDICT & SPECIFICATIONS >>
Comments
Victerone said: Fialed Right of the bat when i ran a simple Trogon Test
Bruno Oliveira said: It depends from user to user but Im using it about 2 years and it fits all my needs of course I dont go clicking every file without really know what Im clicking Most of people who complains about an antivirus is the one who goes around clicking every fu file it downloads
Elbereth said: The fact that the program cant be shut down in any way kills it Stopping real-time protection doesnt stop updates which can interrupt programs that you may be using Attempts to kill the process result in an automatic restart of the program which is tantamount to the behavior of a virus in my opinion Add to that the fact that has been supported on Microsofts own pages by rude unhelpful people httpanswersmicrosoftcome and as far as Im concerned Id rather do regular backups and just reload my system than use this program
Ddd34690 said: it detected and removed one that norton did not
v98 said: Microsoft essential Antivirus is completely useless Got a couple of viruses on my computer whist fully protected just done a full scan and it found nothing after 2 hours Completely useless
Anonymous said: Works great That program just saved my computer from a trojan virus D
Fuzzy178 said: Been using this for a while now and for me have found this better than any other of the free Antivirus products and i have seen that it is highly regardedand can hold its own against many you would have to purchase just to see how good it was protecting my PC i uninstalled and downloaded a Trial of Vipre all came up clean then i tried a Trial of Bit-defender and all was clean also NOD online scan came up clean also i have noticed that my Free malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware find much less nowThis tells me that this is a very good Antivirus and is so low on system resources enjoyed the Review
Ssss said: mkmk