UPDATE – Sept. 21, 2009 – This past weekend, Microsoft Security Essentials beta testers were informed that the product would be available free to the public “very soon”. Most of the beta testing articles I’ve read have been positive about the product, saying that it’s non-intrusive and seems to work well. I guess we’ll find out for sure once it’s released, but frankly, this new FREE addition to the AV world is likely to take a bite out of Symantec and McAfee.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
In the world of computers, FREE STUFF is always fun to find and joyfully pass along to our students…. and there are some really good, free things out there (AVG AntiVirus an anti-virus program, CCleaner a general computer cleanup program, Gimp an image editor, to name a few). In fact, Senior Health Foundation has a Freeware disc full of great software that we sell for $10 (to cover the cost of collecting the programs and making the disc) which is very popular with our students.
Yes, FREE is good, but you don’t often see the word FREE associated with Microsoft products. Yes, Microsoft does give us PhotoStory (a wonderful program for making photo slide shows – we have a class on PhotoStory July 14th), for free, and they have in the past offered a few, small, free programs that were nice. BUT nothing big that really made us sit up and take notice. But that might be changing.
Over the past few months, Microsoft has hinted on a revision to their current pay-for Internet security suite called Windows Live Care. Originally code-named Morro, the anti-virus/ani-spyware program has evolved to now become Microsoft Security Essentials, and Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing it for free for users of Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Right now the program is in Beta, and so far, most beta-testers have given it a thumbs-up review. Microsoft hasn’t yet decided on a public release date.
What’s interesting about the entire situation is that we’ve had decent free anti-virus/anti-spyware programs like AVG for quite some time, and even so, the commercial Internet security companies like Symantec (Norton Anti-Virus) and McAfee have continued to thrive. But now that a big-name company is entering the market with a FREE security product, who knows what might happen. Here’s some possible scenarios:
- Microsoft Security Essentials will be released to the public, and it will be a bust because it slows down your computer too much or just doesn’t catch all the bad stuff it should.
- After the first year, Microsoft will decide to start charging a yearly fee just like everyone else.
- Because it’s from Microsoft, every virus programmer on the planet will try to exploit any weaknesses, and folks will be scared to use it.
- It will be a hit, and the commercial competition will be forced to lower the price of their products.
Who really knows what will happen… but everyone does know two things: (1) Competition is Good, and (2) so is FREE!
Here are some links that give you more info about Microsoft Security Essentials:
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