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I found this thread so decided to ask in it instead of making a new one. Is this program (the free version, by the way) sufficient as an AV program? I'm not asking "is it good enough in most cases" because things like AVG free and Avast free would fall into that category (and both have failed me before), so MSE free would have to be better than them if it's going to be sufficient. Does the paid version of MSE provide more protection? Does anyone know any case of someone getting infected while using the free edition of MSE?

Thanks. I prefer not to pay money if MSE is going to provide me with the kind of protection that didn't have anyone complaining about.

Did Microsoft start charging for MSE and I haven't heard anything about it yet?

AVG in my opinion does not play well with Windows 7. I have heard good words for Avast and MSE. I will say MSE is among the top rated of free anti-virus applications.

There are some cases of infections occurring with MSE, so it's not perfect. No AV programs is 100% foolproof.

Avira Free is a good AV program and so is Comodo Internet Security Free. Comodo I know has been used on a two computers I personally know of where the users go to all sorts of websites and no infection has occurred yet. When I say all sorts, I'm talking about really pushing the envelope so far as any and everything.

MJOLNIR, if no one else speaks up, let me be the first to inform you that the worst infection of my computing life, was under the watch of MSE. MSE didn't help at all. It was very nasty, even running MSE from the partition beside of the infected one didn't help.

This happened some time ago, but it's documented on this forum. At the time it happened, MSE was already popular, and many stood by MSE because it was free. However, it did me no good.

I would highly suggest trying another solution, such as Comodo AV (free). It protects better than all of the other free AV solutions, and you can use it while shopping, banking, emailing, etc.

I've been torched by MSE once, but never again. Never.

Cat

I have been running MSE on my main mahine since I started to use W7 RC1 now on W7. I have never been infected. Some have tried when I went to sites that were less than reputable. but with everything I run I was not infected.

PC World had it rated in the top 3 of free AV programs. I also use various other malware and spyware programs Super Anti Spyware, malware Bytes and Spyware Blaster

As Super Sarge says!

Didn't Nibs just say that no one AV is 100% perfect? This would mean that they will all let one through eventually.

MSE has stopped several attempts at malware trying to infect my PC. And yes I have had one virus get through MSE's detection. For freeware I am perfectly happy with the detection rate of MSE.

I'm not going to bad mouth an AV application because of one failure when I know they will all eventually fail at some point.

PC World also had my HP desktop rated as the "best sub $750 PC" on the market, I don't pay much mind to their ratings anymore. Advertising dollars buys positive reviews, in fact, if I were to own a tech mag, I would do the same.

The dollar is the bottom line.

Sometimes PC World does have good articles, but their bias is obvious. Note how much they push Windows gadgets over the others.

Cat

Thanks catilley, for your story. From the posts is seems Condo AV free is my best shot at free AV.

And IMO a site rating anything Microsoft-related as "one of the top" smells like Microsoft bribing businesses, kind of like how IE8 was rated "one of the best internet browsers" and this is also by MS.

No offense to MS since they make the Xbox and I'm a big fan of that, so Condo AV it is.