Earlier this week, Microsoft officially made its free anti-virus software available for download after being beta tested for some time. Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It updates daily to ensure that it keeps its database up-to-date with the latest virus and other malware threats.
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Seriously though, I have a feeling that this "free" edition is just another way of MS trying to kill its competition. What competition you say? Well, if you offer a free product that is available for a price elsewhere in the market, people tend to gravitate towards the free, taking market share(look into IE vs netscape for a history perspective). MS has the marketing presence (most people have one in their home) and soon, companies like Mcafee and Symantec are struggling in the market. MS swoops in and BAM! the Free product becomes a value-added service. Enter another revenue stream at the cost of competition.
This cycle just repeats itself time and time again. We as a society should be wiser than this to keep falling for it.
Seriously though, I have a feeling that this "free" edition is just another way of MS trying to kill its competition. What competition you say? Well, if you offer a free product that is available for a price elsewhere in the market, people tend to gravitate towards the free, taking market share(look into IE vs netscape for a history perspective). MS has the marketing presence (most people have one in their home) and soon, companies like Mcafee and Symantec are struggling in the market. MS swoops in and BAM! the Free product becomes a value-added service. Enter another revenue stream at the cost of competition.
This cycle just repeats itself time and time again. We as a society should be wiser than this to keep falling for it.
Yet free Antivirus solutions have been available for years and yet I see hundreds of computers a year that I take in as side jobs that have expired or no antivirus software what so ever. And you know what since SP2 of XP the little red shield that comes up and says your computer is not protected takes you to a web page with a variety of Antivirus Solutions so they are advertising for the competition. So Microsoft releases a decent solution and one that is easy to use and is FREE! and yet all you can do is be a troll and bash them some more. So you feel that Microsoft should sit back and just let people complain about viruses and security when they can try and do something about it?
"WAH! WAH! WAH! Windows has so many viruses Microsoft Sucks"
"Microsoft has a free software to help protect me from Viruses and Spyware WAH! WAH! WAH! They Are just trying to be anti-competitive."
Make up your mind people. Do you want Microsoft to try and secure it's OS or not? People complain about security with Microsoft and when they do something about it people complain again. I don't get it.
AMEN BOBIROC....Microsoft can win for losing and yet are also one of the most pirated in the world....sad shape of things be happy MS is becoming more proactive.
the bought I beleive a Bulgarian Anti-virus company several years ago thats how the built Onecare and this software is a stripped down version of Onecare. The Anti-spyware was orignally from a Company I think called Bullseye but I could be wrong however they did acquire a antispy company from which the original Microsoft AntiSpyware beta of four years ago came from. Lots of Companies get bought and sold look at Budwieser now a Dutch company and Campbells now a English company.
MS is becoming more passe every day. I use Firefox and OpenOffice now. When Google releases their OS, I'll say goodbye to Microsoft for good. Their OS is bloated, memory hogging crap. I'll admit XP was decent but they destroyed any usability when they released Vista and Windows 7. From their ridiculous search scheme to moving 'Explore' when you right click.
Fortunately for MS, businesses will continue to use MS because it's so intertwined in their lives, they don't know any thing else. Eventually though, MS will go the way of the dinosaur.
Free virus sw. Pleeeze. McAfee, Norton and Kaspersky have been free after rebate for years. I'm not complaining mind you. I'm just yawning.
I can understand where your coming from I use many open source programs myself. However I have also heard that same thing for many years the doom of Microsoft. I happen to like Vista and I did some test runs of Windows 7 which lets me honest is just a stripped down version of Vista. I was happy with XP but honestly and truthfully I am happier with Vista. I use a Mac at work don't really like it as much but if your an average user and all u do is surf, do some webmail, and a bit of word processing u don't need more than Linux. The thing is when your like me and you are a gamer, video phile you want something that is accessable to those peripherals u need and the games u want to play enter Microsoft.
You're going to trust MS because it's free? You'd better know how to backup your polished OS NOW. You won't have it afterwards. Avast and Avira may work and are free, I've used them occasionally. But buying single user Panda IS 2009 for $5 from 5$ software seemed a better deal. F-secure was my favorite. Kaspersky is linked with F-secure. But Panda's cloud AV protection seems worth investigating. Used Panda for 3/4 years and it works very well. doesn't let anything leak through. With Ubuntu Jaunty just installed KlamAV because Verizon has been messing with my email and Jaunty was able to let me send and receive email when OE failed for 2 weeks.
