Talking about Microsoft’s free anti virus software

Posted by martin237 on Jun 24, 2009 in News | 1 comment

A trial version of Microsoft’s free anti-virus software has been launched in the US, China, Brazil, and Israel.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) promises to provide people with basic protection against viruses, trojans, rootkits and spyware.

The software giant has been criticised in the past for failing to include free security software with Windows.

Its first security package, Windows Live OneCare, failed to attract many customers and will be discontinued.

Microsoft is hoping that MSE, available as a free download from its site, will prove more popular. It has said it will automatically update it for users.

However, rival security vendors have questioned whether Microsoft can compete with more established anti-virus players.

It will be interesting to see what reception Microsoft’s free anti virus product will receive, certainly there will be those in the industry concerned about Microsoft working in the anti virus space in terms of competition, but then I wonder if this might not provide further incentives to drive down the cost of anti virus software. People need anti virus and some kind of firewall software in order to protect their computer (as well as having the hot fixes installed), whether it’s AVG, Symantec, Network Associates or anyone else, that we lower the cost and make the tools more accessible has to be a good thing. If we are wanting to onboard more users both at home and at work to Windows as a platform we need to remove as many barriers to entry as possible, in doing so to reduce temptation away from Windows to Linux, to Mac from existing users.