Another review (Thurrott): MSE is highly recommended, even in the public beta.

[dean-dean]

From the article:

"There's been a lot of interest in Morro/Microsoft Security Essentials and I
think even the beta version of this product will prove quite a hit with
users. It's free, effective, lightweight, and quiet and is, in other words,
exactly what I'm looking for in a security solution."

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/mse_beta.asp

 

[robinb]

wow and he is critical about most everything.
I hope I can grab it on june 23 so I can test it on my text box running xp
sp3 and the one I am running windows 7 rc on.
robin

 

[dean-dean]

Yes, June 23, 2009, at about 9 a.m. Pacific, for the first 75,000 users.
This is a target number, but Microsoft is willing to increase it if
necessary. Hopefully, there won't be the breakdown Windows 7 Beta
downloaders experienced early last January (things were vastly improved for
the Release Candidate, however)...

MSE sounds like a solution so many of my clients need. They need an
uncomplicated program that doesn't overwhelm their computers with too many
running services, processes, and hooks, and doesn't overwhelm the user with
pop-up dialogs with confusing warnings and questions, that most have no idea
what to do about. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

 

[Eric Nay]

It's free, effective, lightweight, and
Do we really trust Microsoft to defend the software they wrote from the
outside, though? If they had written better software in the first place
we wouldn't need an AV solution. I'm not trying to take a cheap shot
here, I'm just arguing against the monoculture of MS software defended
by Microsoft software...

Eric

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Microsoft has the greatest interest--I.e. the most to gain/lose, from the
perception that their platform is risky with regard to malware. I believe
they have the intent of erasing this issue as a significant advantage for
competing platforms, which will be to the advantage of every Windows user.