Jason Dunn
03-24-2010, 11:00 AM
<p>I installed Windows 7 Home Premium on a netbook I was selling to someone, and I wanted to include anti-virus protection, but didn't want to bog the little thing down. I opted to install <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/" target="_blank">Microsoft Security Essentials</a>. As far as AV protection goes, it's fairly light-weight. After installing the software, I was looking in the Action Center, and was surprised to see this message:</p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//dht/auto/1269406691.usr1.png" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>It's a bit confusing to show users text about running two antivirus programs, then provide a link telling the user they are in fact running two antivirus programs on the computer. When you click on the link, this is what you see:</p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//dht/auto/1269406701.usr1.png" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Pretty strange, no? This is the default configuration of Microsoft Security Essentials - I didn't change a thing, and this is a 100% vanilla install of Windows 7, with zero third-party apps installed. I don't know why Microsoft would have the configuration work this way, but I can see the average consumer being confused by this. Come on Microsoft, you can do better than this!</p>