Beta for Next Version of Microsoft Security Essentials Now Available

What is your opinion and judgment based on Poor performer ....wow and how?

 

It is of course my personal opinion and is based on my experience with MSE (both beta and stable). This was later confirmed by the test conducted by Raymond at raymond.cc. I have already discussed the issues I faced with MSE from a performance perspective extensively here at wilders.

 

So in the next round of Raymonds test if Avasts performence is slightly down will it be labed as a poor performer thats a drastic judgement on any product just because of one test...but we are entitled to our own opinion i guess

 

You could say that about any AV.

I've used Bullguard, Norton, McAfee & Panda on my laptop & only very recently switched to MSE. It seems almost as light as the Panda Cloud Free to me. Unlike Panda though, it doesn't suffer from so many false-positives.

 

Each to their own, but I found MSE works best on older machines.

 

In my tests , MSE is the best so far regarding FP's.
They really flag what's a proper malware and not some heur packed executable like most of AV's who are just looking to boost their detection rate. I don't really care if A-Squared has the best so called detection rate, when most of that detection is false positive.
For example, I know I have a clean system, MSE of course didn't find anything , but A-Squared found 52 "nasty malwares". Comodo AV found ten files, flagged as heur.packed and unknown malware. Avast found two files, marked as suspicious.

 

What kind of FPs did the other AVs you tested detected, like can you provide some more info
Hope you don't mind

 

I don't mind, but can't really give you names or something like that, because I can't scan again with them.
But they were all just packed executables, nothing more to it.
I'll make sure that next time when I scan with those products have a screenshot of scan results or log or something.

 

Ok anyways I am not complaining about the detection rates of any of AVs but I feels a bit weird that all the stated AVs had so much FPs(talking about A-Squared and comodo)

 

I understand, well, to be honest Comodo and Avast gave clear indication that they are only suspicious, while A-Squared flagged them as proper malware with names and everything (have nothing against A-Squared, just saying).
That's why I love MSE , awesome detection rate and zero-like FP's.
I don't expect from AV to flag something as malware if PE header of executable is weird or whole file is packed, just based on that. I mean, test the file in lab and if it does something malicious flag it, fine. But otherwise ... leave it be. At least Comodo and Avast can be configured for that, while A-Squared can't, it does that with default settings, you can't reduce sensitivity. Besides, they don't call it even suspicious but proper malware (trojans and such).

 

You didn't really get what I was trying to convey. I simply said that for me MSE was performing poorly and Raymond's tests put that in hard numbers. It's not as if my opinion was formed after looking at the test. I posted about the issues with MSE long before the test was published. On-access performance of any AV is the primary criteria for me, followed by boot-time. With MSE the on-access performance is horrible. Interestingly, if I would have relied on Raymond's tests, I would be running AVG. But it fails my on-access and boot performance criteria.

 

Ok, thanks for the reply. I was thinking about switching from a paid antivirus in my main/gaming rig to MSE. I have MSE in my laptop, but since my laptop isn't suited for gaming at all I couldn't try the performance. In everything else there's no complaint.

Well, since my paid AV has worked solidly for me for years and there's absolutely no performance hit when gaming (none that I've noticed anyways) I'll be renewing the license yet one more time.
thanks

 

True, but I was talking about MSE's performance. And given that MSE's on access performance is miserable in the first place, a slower hard drive adds to the issues.

 

But not on everyone's machine(s)

 

Well yeah agree with you Blackcat MSE BETA v2 is working smooth here too infact I even wrote a review in my blog

 

I noticed in your blog you said MSE has low memory use? What is that based on? In my tests it is near the worst for memory use.

 

I tested it on my C2D system running Win7 32bit Ultimate with 1GB of RAM and I didn't feel slowdowns when running normal computer routine work and during scans it clocked up to 75MB which is I feel very much low memory usage

What is your computer specs

 

I notice during idle it is usually 60-75meg, which is near the worst of the 15 or so anti-malware programs I have tested.

 

Well, if you have a Core i7 and 6GB of RAM you should be fine...

 

Even better if one has a Cray XE6 SuperComputer.

 

My laptop is barely 2 years old.

 

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by 'on access'. It has one of the quickest 'quick-scans' I have ever used.

 

AV Comparitives.com rate it very highly & come to the same conclusion about low f/ps.

 

Not for me. It is without a doubt the slowest scanner I have ever used. My observations of MSE mirror that of ravi16.

 

Weird

I'm not talking about the Beta MSE, sorry if there was any confusion about that. I suppose it's 'Horses for Courses'.

Mind you, my last two AVs were Norton & McAfee.

MSE is warp-speed compared with huge Norton & McFatty! LOL