Microsoft Skips 3, Releases Security Essentials 4 Beta

great, cant wait.

I started using MSE a few weeks ago and I love it, it does a great job with few system resources. It works amazingly in old PCs.
Offtopic: How many times has that image been reused?

I'm interested to see how MSE is going to use less memory. It already uses so little. Is it going to come over to my house and install some more ram in my system?

I've been using MSE for over a year now, after the included McAfee updated itself and then later self-destructed.

The only issue I have is that it can freeze the computer for 30-60 seconds during a background definition update.

MSE was the first anti-virus software I can tolerate using. Almost entirely unobtrusive and even when running a full scan it does not lock up even my old Athlon x2 2gb ram htpc. It seems like such a huge leap forward compared to Norton and all those other ones with their random game killing pop ups and hard drive strangling scans.

I hope MS puts those bastards out of the consumer business!

Sadly though, I have problem with MsMpEng.exe, using too much CPU usage even when not scanning.

MSE is a great program, i recommended it more than anything else, for people who don't want to spend money on anything and even those who do!

This is a software that I don't mind paying

I guess if people notice that they are seemingly 2 versions behind they might be more inclined to update. People complain about Firefox and Chrome versioning - at least they haven't started skipping versions yet

Hopefully the automatic removal can be disabled. I don't want any application deleting files without my knowledge and/or permission.

I don't like the idea of it automatically removing infected files, I will certainly turn this feature off if possible or change my anti virus program. One thing that I would like to see changed though is if you cancel a scan half way through the all results are lost, it should allow you to see the results found so far rather than making you do another scan.

Just installed MSE public beta 4.0.1111.0. Good to see they have brought back the bluish interface. Works great as always. Msseces.exe & MsMpEng.exe are using 5.5MB & 42MB RAM right now.

avast all the way macrocrap bizznatchos!!

one of the few av programs that uses too little system resources and [erforms great.
Recommend everyone to use mse

Sorry but the only thing Avast had that was usefull was its boottime scane which could only be done in 32bit Windows. Since 7 is becoming more dominant and 64bit is the most dominant, thanks to very cheap RAM prices, that part of it is useless.

I have been using MSE since its first beta and I have yet to get a virus. Then again I repair PCs for a living and know what to avoid. But I have had quite a few using Avast that have viruses get past it. Not so many with MSE.

MSE is a great program, and I use it on all my machines (2 win7 64-bit ones - AMD E350 and Intel i5 750, and an XP Pentium 4 one). However, what's with the lack of version 3?

love MSE

MSE is great for minimal protection.
But it lets alot slip by.

AVG is better.

Nice, but I'll wait until the final version is released. I've been sold on MSE ever since it came out. Buh-bye Norton & MacAfee!

I had that problem on a pc at work. Turns out that pc had windows defender (Microsoft's old antimalware software) still installed at the same time as MSE. Windows defender is no longer needed once you install MSE. I uninstalled windows defender and the MsMpEng.exe process used much less resources. Hope this helps.

I you like a resource hog that keeps nagging you to buy the full version, sure. MSE all the way!

When I reformat my laptop I might ditch ESET and give this a try. I'm just worried about the lack of a firewall.

It works with the Windows firewall, which is much better in 7 by the way.

I give it a try.

memadmax

AVG is NOT better.
In fact, it's a bloated resource hog, and it's detection ratio was not something I found remarkable (they apparently improved it lately, but it's still one bloated piece of software).

As for MSE... I've been using it since version 1.
And I can't say I had issues with it at all.
I never experienced system hangups during definition updates or scanning (true, the full scan when done for the first time ever is a bit slow to do, but doesn't really kill my laptop when doing other tasks).

All in all, I found MSE to be quite good.
Avast may be a tad lighter and have slightly higher detection threshold along with Avira, but the latter can be attributed to a high number of false positives (which is the lowest on MSE), and Avast did me a disservice few times when it found that all websites I visited were malware infected (a fault in definition updates - but it was enough to get me back to MSE which incidentally also doesn't need a yearly subscription renewal for the free version - some users who aren't computer literate to a high degree have a problem with this particular renewal).

I'm excited to see Microsoft claiming these updates to the software. If they turn out to be accurate, then they will only further improve on an already solid software.

MSE is a awesome free AV program, but I still don't understand why it only lets you remove the infection after it's done scanning, while others will immediately remove on detection.

I think they may be counting Forefront Security (the enterprise version of Security Essentials) as version 3. I've been putting off implementing it at my company until System Center 2012 is released, so I can't confirm the build number.

MSE is awesome. It's so quiet that sometimes I wonder if it's actually scanning or updating. I hope MSE4 has an option to disable the auto removal feature.

Actually, the "Antimalware Client Version" is 3.x currently (I use Intune, which is based off of the latest release version of MSE, which is also the same as Forefront Endpoint Protection). My copy of Intune has another version number labelled "Windows Intune Endpoint Protection Version" which is version 2.x even though it includes the 3.x listing too.

I think the client software is just a baseline platform, and the UI is customized on top of that. Intune isn't that old, so although the baseline software is version 3.x, Intune is technically only in its second release timeframe.

These are also different from the engine version which is 1.1x

Uninstall, wipe the folder, then reinstall. This works every time I've had this happen (usually caused by an improperly-completed update).