In Microsoft Security Essentials’ favor, no one knows Windows better than Microsoft; Microsoft Security Essentials should be able to tightly integrate with Windows better than any third-party antimalware utility. With the fourth iteration of Redmond’s homebrewed security tool out in the wild, we decided to once again take Microsoft Security Essentials for a spin to see how the latest release stacks up. Our verdict: We recommend Microsoft Security Essentials 4 to gamers who already have clean systems and lack security software. Microsoft Security Essentials is totally free. It only covers antimalware (viruses, rootkits, and spyware) protection, but we’re OK with that. Windows’ own firewall (especially the one found in Vista and Win7) works just fine (and it’s supplemented by the hardware firewall found in the routers nearly everyone uses, anyway), most modern browsers contain good antiphishing features, and the top webmail providers
have good antispam abilities; so for many folks, the extra security features of full-blown security suites may not be totally necessary. This, probably combined with Microsoft’s good working knowledge of Windows itself, results in a relatively lightweight security product that produces the best 3D gaming benchmarks we’ve ever seen. We witnessed a mere .04% decrease in the 3DMark Vantage benchmark score, and the Counter- Strike: Source frame rate drop is just 0.18% over no security software at all. Bravo, Microsoft!
Usability is universally good until Microsoft Security Essentials actually detects malware. After that . . . it
depends. Microsoft Security Essentials’ window opens instantly and is well laid out. A big colored bar at the top of the window is either Green (all is well), Yellow (it has a question for you, but it can wait), or Red (an immediate response to a problem is necessary), and the four main tabs of the program make sense. The
Home screen lets you know that protection is on, when the last update and scan o c c u r red. You can initiate a new scan or change the background scan schedule. Scheduled scans only occur when CPU usage is less than 50% by default. The History tab shows what malware the software has quarantined or deleted.
Some security software t i t l e s make a big deal about announcing trivial security issues with garish p o p - u p s and alarmist language in an effort, we think, to convince users what a great job they’re doing in order to
justify future repurchases. Being free, Microsoft Security Essentials doesn’t have to resort to such shenanigans. That said, we wouldn’t mind seeing Microsoft polish Microsoft Security Essentials’ reporting methods. While testing with live malware samples, the software sometimes quarantined files silently; at other times, it displayed a calming “Detected Threats Are Being Cleaned. No Action Needed” pop-up. When it comes to malware detection rates, we defer to the antivirus certification organizations that test detection against millions of virus samples (rather than the mere hundreds collected from our honeypots). AV-Comparatives.org gives Microsoft Security Essentials a STANDARD rating. In the end, you definitely need
antimalware software on your Windows PC. If your brand-new gaming PC needs something lightweight, Microsoft Security Essentials 4 is perfectly OK.
Security Essentials 4
License: Free
Microsoft
