The just-released beta of Microsoft Security Essentials - not yet available in the UK - is a solid, free tool that protects against malware while taking up few system resources and staying out of your way as much as possible.
Microsoft Security Essentials in action
Most of the time, you'll only know that Microsoft Security Essentials is running because you see its icon in the System Tray. Other than that, it leaves you alone unless it finds a problem. It uses very little RAM or system resources, and we noticed no performance hit on my machine when it ran, except when it performed a scan. When it started the scan, my PC slowed down for the first several minutes of the scan, but then ran fine with the scan working in the background.
Scans and updates are scheduled to run when your PC is idle, although you can run a scan manually. They are given a low priority by the operating system, further reducing their impact on your PC. In addition, CPU throttling is used to ensure that the software doesn't use more than 50 percent of your CPU.
When Security Essentials finds an infection on your system, you can have it immediately take action against the threat, or you can click Show Details, at which point you'll be shown as much information as the software has about the threat.
When you lick on the Clean Computer option, Security Essentials will either delete the file or quarantine it, depending on the nature of the threat.
Easy interface
Most of the time, that's all the interaction you'll have with Security Essentials - there's very little need to open the program for any other reason. However, if you do open it to, for example, customise its actions in some way, you'll find a very simple interface that to a certain extent mimics the look of Windows Defender.
There are four tabs - Home, Update, History and Settings. Home shows you the status of the software and your system and lets you perform a scan; Update shows you the status of definition updates and lets you update them manually; History shows you a history of the actions the software has taken.
Settings lets you change most aspects of how the program works, including when to perform scans, the type of scan to perform (Quick or Full), what actions to take when an infection is detected and the ability to exclude files, locations and processes from scans. There's actually little reason to change any of the defaults, although it's nice to know you can.
When customising, keep in mind that a Full scan takes significantly longer than a Quick scan. On my system a Quick scan took under ten minutes; a Full scan took more than an hour.
There are anti-malware applications that offer far more customisation than does Microsoft Security Essentials. Avast!, for example, lets you finely tune the sensitivity of its scans, so that you can make them more or less aggressive; you can't do that with Security Essentials. Most people won't miss it, but security tweakers may not be satisfied with the level of customisation available.
NEXT PAGE: how safe does it keep you?
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