I have been using Microsoft Security Essentials Beta on day one. I did have some reservations on this product instead of blindly believing whatever Microsoft P.R. (a.k.a. Paul Thurrott) was saying in Windows Weekly Podcast.
My first impressions on Microsoft Security Essentials were:
- Small memory footprint.
- Doing good job at detecting malware on a known infected hard-drive.
- Excessive use of “At Risk” phrase.
Overall I am impressed with the performance and I have installed it on numbers of computers that I managed. Two things that I stumbled upon are:
- VNC is flagged as security threat.
- Explorer.exe uses a lot more memory during the scan. It is unclear if Security Essentials offloads part of the scanning task to Explorer.exe.
In addition to that I have also installed Microsoft Security Essentials for some friends who were having virus troubles repeatedly in the past. This would put Microsoft Security Essentials to the test. Then again, the users often are the weakest links in computer security.
