Microsoft Security Essentials - Still The Best Free Option

[Andy Dixon]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://lifehacker.com/5559102/microsoft-security-essentials-finds-unknown-malware-but-avoids-false-positives?skyline=true&s=i' target='_blank'>http://lifehacker.com/5559102/micro...kyline=true&s=i</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Microsoft's free Security Essentials package rates well at removing malware and running light, but what about dealing with brand-new, unidentified bad stuff? Turns out Security Essentials is still the best at figuring out what's bad-while also avoiding annoying false positives."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/wpt/auto/1276291263.usr11334.jpg" style="border: #d2d2bb 1px solid;" /></p><p>The AV Comparatives website have released a report detailing the results of how 20 of the main anti virus software products perform when their virus definitions are out of date.&nbsp; The idea behind this is to test the heuristic abilities of the products to detect new viruses that have not been identified or fixed in virus definitions.&nbsp;&nbsp;While the MSE product did not come first, it was the highest performing free product in the tests with a very creditable 5th place.&nbsp;</p>

[Chris Gohlke]

I've been very pleased with it. I've got it running on all of mine and my families computer with no issues. It is especially good on older machines as it doesn't use a lot of resources.

[Sven Johannsen]

I just figure, who has greater interest in protecting MSs OSs than MS.

[Eriq Cook]

I've been uninstalling paid versions of Norton for customers (and telling them to request refund) and replacing with MSE. All customers have been very happy. It impacts the OS less and detects viruses/malware better IMO.