Sunday, October 4, 2009

Microsoft Security Essentials Officially Released

Without any fanfare Microsoft released their new security offering Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) earlier last week.

I read about the release in an informational third-party newsletter I receive, not a single word about it in Microsoft's own publication about new downloads. Hardly believing I went to microsoft.com, searched for "microsoft security essentials" and got to this MSE home page with a working download link. What a change to former MS tactics of having a lot of fanfare and sometimes flaky or questionable stuff in the end.

First time I wrote about MSE July 22nd 2009. A follow-up was published August 22nd 2009. In the meantime I have taken to install MSE on my customers computers; it replaces 4 (FOUR!) other security related programs that the customer had to run manually about once very week.

On one machine MSE found and removed a clear leftover from some malicious stuff that the other programs had overlooked and on yet another machine MSE removed a Trojan horse virus that had so far escaped any detection. I know this is not representative and only anecdotal but nevertheless it again points in a very positive direction.

If you use MSE all you have to do is have any eye on it's little icon in the system tray.ScreenShot006As long as this tray icon is green all is well.

If it ever turns yellow or orange double click it and the program window will tell you clearly what to do and have a big fat yellow button right there for you to click.

If the icon ever turns red you better give it immediate attention; double click it and the program window will tell you clearly what to do and have a big fat red button right there for you to click.

I am expecting "official" comparisons between MSE and other security suites to be available in a few weeks time. Here is a first example from The Washington Post.

If future results are anything only close to that good I will definitely keep using MSE and recommend to my previous customers to switch over. The ease of use IMHO is unsurpassed. 

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog.

Thank you in advance.

2 comments:

Betty said...

Do I have to uninstall Avast before downloading MSE?

Eike Heinze said...

Betty,
YES, you should never have two anti-virus applications running at the same time!
I am planning on writing a step by step guide on how to switch from "my" classic computer setup (before August 2009) to the new setup with MSE but that will take a few more weeks until I can do it.