Microsoft Security Essentials: best free antivirus protection?

As you might know Microsoft is having in beta testing for a few months a free version antivirus, spyware and malware program  called Microsoft Security Essentials. Yesterday that program came out of Beta and is available for download to anyone. Of cours, as with all free stuff it caused quite a stirr and many people installed it, including I. This post is meant to show you what my experience was with Microsoft Security Essentials free antivirus solution.

Installation and configuration

Everyone can download Microsoft Security Essentials, but just people with a genuine Windows Installation can install it. Seems fair to me. Also I want to point out that the software is compatible with Windows XP, Vista (32 and 64 bit) and 7 (32 and 64 bit).

Right after installation Security Essentials updates its database

Installation is easy, no annoying popups, things to select and so on. Configuration options seem scarce at first look but if you think pragmatically there’s any option you might need in there. Microsoft Security Essentials replaces the former Windows Defender and your other antivirus software (it does not uninstall it but recommends you to do so).

Settings are well laid out and easy to understand

Actual use

Antivirus software is not usually something you want to be reminded too often, and Microsoft Security Essentials manages not to be intrusive at all, it just sits in the system tray and awaits for security threats to be detected. It does integrate with Internet Explorer (or so it says at installation) but integration is not vizible (no buttons or toolbars).

This is what you'll probably see 99% of the time

Memory footprint is very low (3.2 MB reported by Task Manger) and during system scan or file access (as it features a real time scanner) I couldn’t tell any difference from Avast and definitely feels faster than AVG.

System scan in progress

Conclusion

I don’t want to jump to conclusion after just a few hours of use, but I think Microsoft did a great job with Security Essentials and if history tought us something is that an EU fine is under way as Microsoft probably will want in the future to put the free antivirus in their Windows installations. Also the traditional antivirus providers will have to come up with something good if they don’t want to end up like Netscape in the browsers war.

Interface is simple and effective

My take on Microsoft Security Essentials is that you should give it at least a try. I will update this post as I’ll discover new things.