Anti-Virus Software, That's Free!

I am probably the last Microsoft blogger to actually get round to writing something about this… but hey, I have been busy!

Microsoft recently released to the public their free anti-virus solution, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).  I had been trialling the beta versions for a few months on a Windows 7 computer and I was really pleased with it, so the fact that it has now been released as a final product is great!  Bizarrely, it even got the stamp of approval from my Anti-MS brother who told me that it consumes much less CPU and memory on his computer, and he has now gotten rid of his McAfee software completely (even though his paid for subscription has not expired).  Of course, then he finished the sentence with the usual “but it is from Microsoft so is bound to be full of security holes” nonsense he actually believes.

The virus signature updates are automatically downloaded via the Windows Update service, so it is important that you have this feature enabled.  MSE is available in 32 or 64 bit and will run on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, so go get it now!  There really is no excuse not to run an antivirus product on all your computers, especially because it is completely free – you just need to have a genuine license of Windows in order to be able to install it…  :-)

The download and more information is available here: www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/