Using Security Essentials
Installation is quick and easy following the installation wizard. The download file is less than 8MB and is light on system resources compared to other Antivirus utilities out there.
You will need to validate your copy of Windows when installing.
After validation and installing the program you can check for updates and scan your system right away.
You will get a progress update screen while running the database updates.
The user interface is intuitive and nicely laid out making it easy to get protected right away. You can choose between Quick, Full, and custom scans and Real-time protection is enabled by default.
Go into the Settings tab to customize the scanning schedule.
Change Real-time protections settings or disable it in settings.
In Settings you can also change Microsoft SpyNet membership where Basic is enabled by default. If you choose the Advanced membership a lot more data is sent to Microsoft including locations, filenames, and more information of potential malicious software. If you are concerned about the amount of data being sent you should check out their Privacy Statement.
When a scan is complete you will see the results in the main screen.
Overall Security Essentials performs fast scan and is light on system resources. We ran it on a Windows 7 (32-bit) machine with an Intel Dual Core processor and 3GB of RAM and everything ran smoothly.
According to their site they are offering only 75,000 beta copies and you will need to sign up for a Microsoft Connect account to get it. If you are an early adopter and would like to try out the beta click the link below before it’s unavailable. Right now the official release is scheduled for some time in September.
Microsoft Security Essentials
