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[#1]

Yep, that headline is truth. Earlier today Microsoft's Security Essential's suite left beta to fly in the real world.

So, of course, I had to spend the evening installing and testing it on my XP, Vista, and Windows 7 boxes

The short version, it works like a champ! I love it when things just work out of the box.

There're three flavours of the anti-virus / anti-malware application available:

• Windows XP 32‐bit
• Windows Vista/WIN7 32‐bit
• Windows Vista/WIN7 64‐bit

All are available through Microsoft's Security Essential's download centre.

Installation was a breeze. Just run the executable, click a few 'accept' buttons and your installation is under way.

A few caveats though:

• Disable or uninstall your current anti-virus / anti-malware software before starting the installation process. Security Essentials will likely conflict and your computer will have a bad day
• Disconnect from the Internet while you're running without malware software (you just uninstalled it, remember). Security Essentials will try and run and update during the installation, but the update will fail (since you're not connected to the Internet). This is OK, as the software has recent malware definitions in the installer currently running. Just let the software finish up the install and verify that it's running ok. Then reconnect to the internet.
• Your copy of Windows must pass Microsoft's Genuine software test.

For a quick test I downloaded an industry-standard 'eicar' test file...just to see what a true 'positive' looked like.

Caught it as it was downloading

Oops...I guess I should remove it.

Threat Removed

Now I didn't have a lot of time with Security Essentials this evening, but I did find this excellent overview by some folks who did at Ars Technica:

MSE has a surprising number of settings to work with. Considering the simplicity of the product, it's still very customizable. Power users enjoy having tons of features to tweak, and we think they'll be satisfied with the settings that can be changed in MSE. It doesn't offer as many options as some other security suites, but given its features, the settings that can be adjusted are exactly what one would expect.

Once the software's installed and has done a quick scan of your system, it's easy to forget its there. And that's the point of good utility-service software. It's there and obvious when you need it, otherwise it's happy to sit in the background and do it's job.

I'm thinking this is the start of a beautiful friendship...

Message Edited by bgrier on 09-30-2009 09:03 AM