Digital Cheat Sheet

Simple UI your grandmother could navigateFor years Microsoft has actually had its own antivirus in the form of Windows Live Onecare. Onecare started off as a great idea; Microsoft, knowing its own software inside and outside should have made an excellent antivirus program. The problem with Windows Live Onecare is that over the years it became rather bloated and slow. What started off as a security suite soon became a tune-up, a backup, and a PC management utility. Needless to say, Onecare has not been the hit that many envisioned it to be and corresponding with the Vista backlash Onecare got a bad wrap among consumers. I personally preferred Windows Live Onecare to other Windows antivirus programs because of it’s price, it was pretty-darn good protection, and it possessed some nice automated tuneup features.

This week Microsot reintroduced a stripped down Windows Live Onecare in the form of Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft Security Essentials is not a large program and after its install essentially replaces Windows Defender. From my testing of the program it is both lightweight and about as fast as Windows Defender is. The interface is simple, but clean with only essential tabs (Home, Update, History, and Settings). The settings are relatively limited to whatever you would see in a standard antivirus program with none of the bells and whistles that come with competing products like Norton or McAfee.

Taskbar iconAll of that being said, Microsoft security essentials appears to be a pretty decent antivirus. Only time will tell how effective the program actually is, but whenever it does come out officially should be a standard download for any Windows XP, Vista, or 7 machine. The whole point of this new antivirus is to give customers some kind of basic protection for free. I work for a computer repair store and from experience most PCs I encounter either have outdated antivirus protection or expired. I am saying download because currently Microsoft has no plans of releasing this software with Windows to avoid those nasty antitrust charges it has been dealing with for years. Although it will not be bundled with Windows Microsoft Security Essentials will be free for home and small business users and will be available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Unfortunately the beta is already closed up, but whenever Microsoft does release the final product I suggest you give it a try. Although this will not replace something like Nod32, Kapersky, Norton, McAfee, or other premium security software, but this should provide the essentials for any average computer user. I approve, good job Microsoft.