Microsoft Security Essentials

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Dave Cohen" <[email protected]>



| I installed it in a spare partition a while back. I'm a little tired of
| all the hype. Ubuntu works well enough for internet use but most (not
| all) of the apps lack the polish of their windows equivalent where they
| exist and it updates virtually every time I bring it up. I have no
| problems with winxp and windows 7 works very well. My main complaint
| with windows is some software and my scanner cease working when updating
| from winxp to windows 7, but Linux isn't much help here also.
| For all you people out there, use whatever suits your purpose, but cease
| and desist trying to sell your pet preferences to the whole world,
| nobody is paying you to do so and nobody cares.

Well said!

 

[gufus]

Hello, Man-wai!

You wrote on Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:52:00 +0800:

FL>> The Microsoft Security Essentials seems to work rather well from what
FL>> I have read, and from a personal opinion the interface is simple and
FL>> functional.
FL>>
FL>> Anyone else using this product?
MwC>
MwC> It requires activation. Still using Avira Personal.
MwC>

Me too Avira Premium tho , Been using Avira for years now. Good AV, IMHO

 

[David Kaye]

I've tried it twice. For me, it slows things down considerably.

This part is downright bizarre. I've installed MSSE on about 30 customer
machines with no slowdown at all versus Avast. Then I put it on one machine
and the thing crawled. At first I couldn't figure it out, but sure enough,
when I took out MSSE and put Avast back it was fine.

The machine was an XP SP3 with a Pent 4 processor. And yet I've gotten good
results with slower machines.

 

[EX_OWM]

Ubuntu works well enough for internet use but most
(not all) of the apps lack the polish of their windows equivalent

I've been using it a fair bit in recent months and it takes me straight back
to Windows 3.1, almost uncannily so when you have to keep dropping out to a
DOS prompt .... oops, sorry, terminal ... to do anything that's not run of
the mill.

 

[EX_OWM]

I'm saying that some people don't, not all. In the case of m$, they
have a long history of not showing any change in their ability to
develop and maintain secure software.

Care to tell us what the significant insecurities are in Windows 7 or
Windows Server 2008?

 

[David W. Hodgins]

Care to tell us what the significant insecurities are in Windows 7 or
Windows Server 2008?

For w7, they currently only have one publicly known "less critical"
unpatched vulnerability http://secunia.com/advisories/product/27467/

With server 2008, it's currently two "less critical" vulnerabilities
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/18255/

Those are for the os itself. If you include the various programs such
as internet explorer 8, additional, although at this time, also
"less critical" problems also show up
http://secunia.com/advisories/product/18255/

As with any software from m$, it's only a matter of time till the new
problems are found.

If you skim through
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/archive.mspx
you'll notice that many advisories are fixes for things that allow
remote code execution, and/or privilege escalation.

If you follow the secunia advisories, and the release of fixes from
m$, over time, you'll understand that m$ is not, and never has been,
capable of developing secure software, in my opinion.

Many of the problems seem to stem from bad design choices, where they
are trying to make things easy to use, and then adding security features
after the fact, instead of designing the system to be secure from the
start. Most of the rest appear to be problems where one group of
software developers are using tools/features of other software components
(such as the help fiasco), without properly considering the possible
security implications, of using those features.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

 

[David Kaye]

Eh? Flash is not a Microsoft product. Neither are QuickTime or Firefox. All
have had their malware vulnerabilities. It's hardly Microsoft's fault if they
don't fix the exploits in 3rd party software.