MSE seems to be excellent

The latest AVC test indicate that Microsofts MSE is an excellent choice for an AV, and it's free.

Some AVs seem to have constant problems with updating or something else.

Is anyone aware of such problems with MSE? There seems to be no downside, and it may put a dent in other AVs use because of its security and cost.
I think Trjam might be able to give us some insight in time as his Avatar indicates he has moved to it.

Regards,
Jerry

 

Jerry, someone said today that even with 60 percent being tops for zero day protection, antivirus products basically stink. Now for most, they will offer 100 percent protection because of how they surf the web. I really now feel the freebies offered are as good and maybe better then some paid products. Why pay for 60 percent protection.

Layering helps but really sandboxing or something like ShadowDefender and a free AV, and a free firewall are really all that about 96 percent of what people need. I honestly believe this now. For me, using FD-ISR, using Windows firewall and a AV really are all I intend to use. And MSE is a great product. It may only update once a day, but it uses cloud technology to.

Elapsed has been right all along. Some may disagree and I respect that.

 

Is MSE as light than PCA?

 

Thanks, Jeff.
These type tests have never shown a very high rate of detection. I agree that it does not make sense to pay for such low rates.
Now I might argue when looking at the results of other AVC tests, EXCEPT the free ones have done extremely well on all tests with MSE seeming to hold a very high position.
The "hated" Microsoft has hit a bell ringer with MSE. I am not aware of any downside, unless one insists on suite. But with my little knowledge of firewalls I have become convinced that OA is better than any suite firewall with the possible exception of KIS.

I think that with MSE as the AV on my laptop, shown in my signature, with the other applications I will have a very high probability of never experiencing an infection. I realize nothing is 100%.

I appreciate the comments, and if you keep MSE give a report from time to time.

Regards,
Jerry

 

Never tried it

 

Well get with it so I can learn. I am so incompetent that I depend on you experts to steer me right.

My impression is that it has not been tried by many on these forums, but with the recent test results by AVC that may change. If I did not already have others paid for I think I would go for MSE. But only if it did not destroy your computer.

Regards,
Jerry

 

To me, yes. Both are good. Panda needs to crank the heuristics down but they all crank them up for testing. You have to try them to see what fits you. But my wallet leaking money is over.

 

To me, MSE with PC Tools firewall and Sandboxie is all you need. It is that simple.

 

For the next day or two anyway. lol

MSE is great. Only downside is it eats RAM like a fat boy at a hotdog eating contest.

 

Disagree. Running version .1959 on 4 different computers all with different hardware and it isnt a issue for me. I know at one time it was, but this version is very light.

 

New as of when? I tested it a couple weeks ago and it used about 65meg. Hell, I have Twister on one PC and it is using 5meg. CIS on another and it uses about 14meg for the whole suite. NIS about 12 meg(again, a full suite). Panda Cloud about 14meg.

So why does MSE need 5X as much memory? I know, a lot of you don't care about ram, but I do. Therefore I stick to other programs.

 

With all this positive talk on MSE, I think i should uninstall my Avira Premium trial and give MSE a try.

 

65megs?? Huh, in my case it's using only 4megs.

 

Probably because you are not counting both its processes. Look again.

 

Cloud technology? Where does it say that?

Anyhow, my experience with it was satisfactory, but ultimately not good enough.
The interface is nice and its resource usage was light on my computer. Can scan within archives and offers all the basics + a little bit more. There's exclusions, protection levels, different scans, and Microsoft SpyNet. It has a native 64-bit version as well.

But then, I had update problems. Had to fix that by manually creating a scheduled task.

What really ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ was how much it lagged my Paragon Backup & Restore. Even added the whole program folder to exclusions, but that made no difference. The startup was slow, it freezes at the most basic of tasks, and was ultimately unbearable.

Therefore I had to change it to Avast Home, which offers a LOT of features for a free version. Password locked my settings and it's gonna stay (for now).

 

So does MSE use alot of resources or not ?

 

Yes, you are right, the one with Microsoft label is using 4megs (that's why I thought there was only one) but the other one is using 54megs.
Hmmm... interesting indeed, don't like it either.
I'm gonna leave it and if I notice any slowdowns it's gone.
So far I don't feel any.

 

MSE will use more RAM than say, a cloud application, because of the "database" of heuristic and behavioural analysis functions. That in itself will be the largest part of the application weighing probably around 40mb, because you cannot make heuristics that good, with false positives so few, without creating a reasonable amount of heuristic functions.

That being said, this memory use is static, and will not affect your system performance. The remaining memory use, which at an educated guess is probably around 10-20mb will be dynamically changing according to system, spec, and how many files are being scanned at a particular time.

 

In comparison to most AVs, yes it is at the high end. It has two processes. One uses little ram, the other uses a lot. Its CPU is no lighter than most other AVs I have tried.

 

I suspect you are right. When I tried it a few weeks ago, first thing I did was check the ram usage and it was way down. Then it did its first signature update, and it ballooned.

Still, the other AVs I listed above, with the exception of PCAV, have signatures, and they don't use 60+ meg.

 

Which is probably one of the reasons they didn't score as good as MSE.

Sorry, but when it comes to judging the performance and/or code of a program, memory usage is a pretty weak statistic. Considering you can hide it in system applications, spread it across many process, and also simply refuse to use it at the expense of more CPU cycles.

MSE is a free program, and the developers have no marketing motivation to try make MSE seem like "the best" at the cost of real performance. They just created a well coded program, that performs efficiently, and properly uses Windows API. All this without the need of installing a thousand drivers, or hooking functions left, right and center.

It all contributes to the "light" feeling. Another reason why I forget I'm even running an AV.

 

I have never noticed an AV being heavy. I don't care if it is heavy unless it slows my system. Although I have never used MSE I don't think that I would notice it with 8 megs of RAM.

Regards,
Jerry

 

I guess I don't feel MSE protects me any better than any of the other programs I listed. It had a nice showing in this test, but in others not so much. To each their own.

 

I never notice a AV being heavy either. I think you almost really need to run tests to see a AVs true impact on performance, as "feelings" can be deceptive.

 

I used it for about eight months.I liked it but the only drawback for me was i could not use third party firewall because microsoft said so.I went back to avast free, pctools firewall and sandboxie.The boot time as well as the protection is similar or maybe my pc likes avast better