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Cycrow

MSE is not actually that bad for Free.
But i find Avast to be better, but i personally prefer NOD32

i never found MSE to be that kind on the system, althou better than Norton

penrhyn

Ozzy89 wrote: »

true, this thread is for those who doesn't know the existence of MSE.

If that's the case then they won't be reading this will they.?

Ozzy89

All viruses have a 'life' after certain time in service they intent to drop from the web because the security firms intent to provide protection. This in turn forces programmers to program other malicious applications to defeat the security firms. The definition provided daily by Microsoft contains all the latest/popular known viruses on the web. Secondly all malicious applications uses a similar 'signature' during infection. This signature is what alerts the anti-virus applications into motion.

rmg1

And that, AFAIK, is how most, if not all, AVs work.
So why is MSE so poor at it's job? (And that's not just my opinion, a lot of AV comparison sites agree).

Cycrow

Ozzy89 wrote: »

All viruses have a 'life' after certain time in service they intent to drop from the web because the security firms intent to provide protection. This in turn forces programmers to program other malicious applications to defeat the security firms. The definition provided daily by Microsoft contains all the latest/popular known viruses on the web. Secondly all malicious applications uses a similar 'signature' during infection. This signature is what alerts the anti-virus applications into motion.

Doesn't mean they can detect every virus just because the definitions are updated

VoucherMan

Ozzy89 wrote: »

true, this thread is for those who doesn't know the existence of MSE.

Surely most 'techies' & readers of this forum will already know about it.

Any newcomers are far more likely to come across the MSE article first. In which case MSE is the first free / untied antivirus on the list.

Personally I'll go along with the Avast suggestion. I used to run MSE but it started slowing the system down so I switched to Avast. Haven't had a problem since.

Enterprise_1701C

We have MSE on one of the computers. IT is a bit pernickity though - I can't recall what it is that it downloads, but it is something to check the legitimacy of Microsoft products on the computer. We have a perfectly legitimate isse of Office on this PC, a friend gave it to use and it was sealed when we got it. Only problem is we lost the licence number and MSE decided it was a fake and put this info on our issue. It still works fully, it is just irritating.

Ozzy89

Cycrow wrote: »

Doesn't mean they can detect every virus just because the definitions are updated

I didn't say it detects all the viruses only the popular ones roaming the web.

Ozzy89

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

We have MSE on one of the computers. IT is a bit pernickity though - I can't recall what it is that it downloads, but it is something to check the legitimacy of Microsoft products on the computer. We have a perfectly legitimate isse of Office on this PC, a friend gave it to use and it was sealed when we got it. Only problem is we lost the licence number and MSE decided it was a fake and put this info on our issue. It still works fully, it is just irritating.

It is known you causes slowness on XP and Vista machines.

NiftyDigits

Ozzy89 wrote: »

It is known you causes slowness on XP and Vista machines.

So why are you giving it such a blanket recommendation then?? Many are still using these OS.

Security Essentials is less heavy on RAM usages; therefore it won’t add further system delay.

Perhaps you should take a little break. Your posts are a little confused of late.