Microsoft Security Essentials

Antivirus Software

Name of antivirus software: 

Operating system in use: 

System performance 

Ability to prevent malware 

Ability to remove malware 

My Review 

It's a little like a roulette wheel. No one can say which is best over some future span of time. What is a winner today, may have a hole tomorrow.

I have several desktops and two laptops. I have used many AV's over the past few years, starting with Mcafee, then Norton. They both did the job (no infections), but became too expensive and grew to be resource hogs with newer releases. One could assume that since many large corporations use these two, they should be iron clad, but that may be a bad assumption.

I then switched to AVG's freeware. It did a nice job as well, and was a little less taxing on the system. I was pretty happy with it, but being adventurous decided to try out Bitdefender on one of my machines. I regret that one. After several months it started bugging me to buy their Pro version. I just about never got that thing uninstalled. There were about 100 entries for Bitdefender scattered throughout my system registry.

I also tried IOBits Secure360. I love their Advanced SystemCare tuning package, memory management, and disk defragger. Secure360 seemed to work OK, but a worm did get through once. I used Microsoft's free Malicious Software Removal tool to get rid of the worm.

That experience led me to Microsoft's Security Essentials (also free and real-time). It has been doing a good job for about six months now, and seems to be pretty mild on system resources (surprising for a MS product). I have it on all of my systems now.

Would you recommend this to a friend?