Since I got my first computer back in 1995 (with Windows 95 on it) I’ve gone through several different pieces of antiviral software as well as the incremental upgrades that became more common. As time progressed, the size of the software increased as well as the scope of what was included in an AV package.
I remember the days that AV software took up maybe 20MB on the hard drive and it seems that these days you could surrender at least 100MB. Sure, with 1TB hard drives in the mainstream (compared with 1GB that I had back in 1995) space is not so much an issue these days but I still long for software that is lean and doesn’t try to be everything at the same time.
Two companies from which I have previously used AV solutions and have also been guilty of software bloat are Symantec (owner of the Norton brand) and McAfee. Originally, you could just get the antivirus but over the years there would be other bits and pieces like spam filters, registry cleaners, installation scanners and firewalls,. They also got slower and nagged you to death to upgrade for a fee, buy extra components or just to tell you about the fact that it did something albeit trivial.
FTLOG, I just want an antivirus.
Microsoft Security Essentials (Home)
Enter Microsoft Security Essentials. If you have Windows XP (32-bit), Windows Vista or Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit) then it is a free download and takes up very little space (the install file is under 8MB and is about 12MB installed). Its memory footprint is also quite small at around 3MB and is quite nimble compared to other packages on slower hardware that may not have as much RAM.
Microsoft Security Essentials (Update)
The other thing I really appreciate is that is that it is truly “set and forget”. Unless something is wrong, you don’t even know it’s there. It updates security definitions once a day as well as a system scan at the time of your choosing. The interface is also clean and avoids the need to trudge knee-deep through various menus with vaguely described options.
Microsoft Security Essentials (Settings)
It really is that simple.
I’ve installed this on tens of machines and have yet to encounter issues due to the software itself (I had one issue due to a poorly cooled CPU that overheated during scanning but that doesn’t count). I reckon that this is a great wakeup call for the AV manufacturers who rely on subscriptions, annual updates and bolt-ons to bring in profits whilst churning out disappointing products.
So before you are sucked into another annual subscription with your current AV solution give Security Essentials a go – you might be pleasantly surprised while saving your hard earned cash.
Update (22/04/2010):
It seems that McAfee has dropped the ball again with an update that mistook a critical system file in Windows XP with Service Pack 3 applied resulting in major inconvenience for users and corporations. In particular, Coles suffered unavailability of 10% of its registers whilst Intel also suffered widespread problems. In my mind, this reinforces my reasons for using Microsoft Security Essentials over McAfee.
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