What's the verdict

[ohheckyeah]

What's the verdict on the Microsoft Security Essentials?

The tech put it on my computer when he switched out the hard drive so I wouldn't be without security when I started up the computer. I noticed that it takes up very little space compared to McAfee but I don't know much about it's efficacy.

Anybody tested it out?

[hobbit709]

1. Works as well as all their other stuff.

[canetoad]

3. So I guess you and I won't trample each other

in the rush for Windows 7? :rofl:

[Statistical]

2. McAffee & Norton are both bloatware.

They make Windows look downright efficient.
Even if you don't use MSE I would ditch McAfee & Norton for good.

Avast & AVG do the same thing (Avast actually is one of only few AV to get "100% in wild" rating when tested) with a lot less resources.

I have been using MSE for about 2 weeks now. Seems to work fine, basically what you excpet. Light resource use, realtime security, can setup to do a full scan (I do it once a day at 3:00 AM), downloads updates about once a day.
Long term not sure if it is better, equal or worse than Avast!.
Likely will take 6 months to find that out.

[madokie]

4. I'm back to cloud on my xp partition

panda's cloud antivirus that is. Right now I'm eagerly waiting for ubuntu 9.10 to be released because I think I'm well on my way to a whole new computing experience. I'm using 9.4 right now and it blows me away as to how much faster it is in surfing the web that xp home is.

Heres a link in case anyone wants to try cloud. If you try it I think you'll like it. http://www.cloudantivirus.com/en/
It has the smallest footprint that I've found in antivirus software

[canetoad]

5. It also has a habit of updating whenever-the-fuck it feels like it

no matter if you are rotating a large drawing in Illustrator or linking a couple of dozen imported graphics in InDesign.

You need to stop what you are doing and wait for Panda to do its business. I tried it for a little while and found the lack of control over its command of CPU usage was unacceptable.

I'm tossed by the amount of head/disk/forum space that folk give to security and AV programs. You turn over control of your computer to some fucking company and trust them to keep it safe and never question whether they have an ulterior motive in making you belive your computer is NOT safe.

Go for it folks, load every fucking thing you like, reduce your workrate to 0, fret your heads off about picking up a bug, in the meanwhile the sane will carry on computing without feeling as though Homeland Security is monitoring every keystroke.

FWIW I've been running without a resident antivirus for months. Waiting for someone to tell me why I am disadvantaged.

[Why Syzygy]

6. As you know,

me too. I ran MS Live One Care the other day. It found one "trojan" .. my unlocker.exe file, it said. I've had unlocker for years with no problems and nothing ever id'd it. It amounts to OPTIONAL ebay shortcuts within the program. Not a "trojan" at all. Doing some google found that a few people are now warning other users off of unlocker. Pity the hysteria.

[madokie]

7. What I'm doing to fix that problem is going to ubuntu

I've been trying the different distros for a while now and I like ubuntu the best so I downloaded the new version, 9.10 earlier today and now have it on my computer. I plan to set my xp up so when I boot to that partition I'll go directly to autocad and not use xp for anything else except that. I'm still not comfortable with ubuntu yet but I'm liking what I've learned so far. I'm going to try the no antivirus software on this install and if I start having problems then I'll check into antivirus software.

On cloud I had no idea of any of what you were saying as I don't use this computer for anything except autocad and surfing, so thanks for that info. Once I do put autocad in my startup folder in xp I more than likely will do away with antivirus there too as I won't be going to the net any from over there.

[RoyGBiv]

9. Speaking of AutoCAD ...

This is one area where Linux is lacking.

But, I did run across this not long ago: http://brlcad.org/ It's cross-platform and works with Windows, Macs, Linux, BSD, etc.

It's supposed to be good. However, I notice that it apparently has an extremely steep learning curve and requires a lot of command line-ish input. It also strikes me as somewhat complicated to install.

Now, I know nothing about CAD systems, so I can't say anything more. I just thought I'd mention it.

[madokie]

10. It's just that I've spent my whole computer time with Autocad

The reason I bought my first computer back in the late eighties was for autocad 10, the first release that was truly a 3-d platform. I write my own menus and commands and can draw anything you want except maybe put the lettering on a lightbulb, just haven't really tried that so don't know for sure. At some point I'm going to try Wine but I can live with using windows for running the program it that doesn't pan out.

Thanks for the link, I'm sure I'll be checking it out one of these coming up cold ass nights when I'm bored to death and can't sleep and need to do something except bounce around here in du.

[ohheckyeah]

8. Thanks for the reply.

I use McAfee but I noticed Microsoft Security Essentials uses a lot less resources.