Tomorrow, Microsoft will make its new security and antivirus programme free for download for 19 countries including New Zealand (head here; all species of Windows beyond XP SP2 are supported; Mac owners are out luck - not that they need it).

Although New Zealand wasn’t on the beta trial list, I procured a copy from Microsoft NZ (off my own bat. The local subsidiary hasn’t shown much interest in the product up til this point).

I’ve been living with it for a while.

On June 26, I decided to delete all antivirus software from my computer, bar the beta version of Microsoft’s freebie Security Essentials, which replaces its $99 commercial product, OneCare (on Monday, it updated itself from the beta to Version 1.0).

So far, everything’s gone flawlessly.

I haven’t been infected by any viruses, malware or other nasties, and my bank balance is no lower than usual.

As I noted in my original article Security Essentials got very solid notices from the independent German lab that carries out tests for PC Magazine and PC World.

Better, Security Essentials has not crashed on me once in five months.

Its predecessor, OneCare, had PC tune-up and back-up features that Security Essentials lacks, but proved so unstable I finally uninstalled it in a rage.

Security Essentials is stable, has a smaller footprint, and makes no perceptible impact on system performance. And while it’s good to keep you PC in shape, and to back up, there are free tools for both tasks accessible through Windows’ Control Panel.

Don't just take my word for it
Andreas Marx of AV-Test - who carries out tests for US PC World and PC Magazine, among others has already given Security Essentials a workout.

As Computerworld.com relates, the German tester gives Microsoft excellent grades after pitting Essentials against 3,200 recent viruses, bot Trojans, worms and pieces of spyware:

"All files were properly detected and treated by the product," said Marx. "That's good, as several other [antivirus] scanners are still not able to detect and kill all of these critters yet."

AV-Test also measured Security Essentials against a set of in-house false positives to see whether the software mistakenly fingers legitimate files, a nightmare for users, who can be left with a crippled computer, and a disaster to the reputation of a security company.

"None of the clean files were flagged as being malicious," noted Marx. "Very good."

While his tests are ongoing, Marx so far found no fault with Essential's ability to execute more complex tasks, either, such as scrubbing malware from a system, or eeking out rootkits. [UPDATE: AV-Test has just completed malware tests on Security Essentials, with the product performing on a par with rivals.]

Interestingly, Marx ahd yet to find any evidence of Essential’s vaunted cloud computing ability, which is supposed to see it contact Microsoft servers in real-time immediately it encounters an unknown threat.

The Advanced Settings does detail "Microsoft SpyNet" which is a system for the company to collect information about attacks on your PC, or suspicious software, then send it to a Microsoft server. On the optional "Advanced membership" of SpyNet option, the company says personal data may be inadvertantly uploaded, but that that the company will not use it to identify you (see screen grab above).

Essentials was trim (the install file is only around 5MB), scans as quickly as any programme out there, sits unobtrusively in the background, and has made no obvious impact on my laptop’s performance. The interface (above) is simple to follow, and so far hasn't thrown up any of those unfathomable file permission requests that most security programmes are want to do.

Unlike OneCare, Essentials does not offer PC tune-ups, or online backup.

If you want those features, you have a good reason to stick with Symantec Norton 360 or a similar commercial product - although now would be a good time for Symantec drop the price of its online backup - 2GB is free, or at least included in 360’s $129 sticker price; a more realistic 25GB costs a ridiculous $NZ149 a year as part of an omnibus backup/tune up subscription.

Some will be tempted to combine Essentials with Windows’ capable built-in tune-up features, and use Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for online offer scads more storage online for nix). Essentials does let you set a "Restore point" before it attempts to clean an infected file and, like other security programmes, can be used to scan a removable drive and, on top of its real-time scans, can be scheduled to do an full system check at at off-peak time.

AVG and others are trying to peg Essentials as a bare-minimum product for emerging markets (Microsoft made 75,000 beta copies available to users in the United States, China, Israel and Brazil, which seems a good cross-mix to me).

Microsoft itself describes Essentials as “security you can trust” and “no-cost, no-hassle security software for your home PC.”

So far, I’ve found it offers full protection for my first-world PC. And, in a recession, all free stuff is appreciated.

Symantec is bites back
The security software market leader Symantec has labelled Security Essentials a "thin defence" for its lack of identity protection or spam safeguards.

Spam I don't care about. My ISP's filter takes care of it. So does yours.

How any given product protects against identity theft is more of a grey area. Certainly, Symantec does more in terms of black-listing websites and files that it - and the 40 million of its customers who participate in its Norton Community - know to harbour phishing scams and other set-ups designed to swipe your personal details then use them against you.

To wit, the company has recently introduced a new crowd-sourcing feature for rating files - and that is definitely a feature that benefits from scale (which Microsoft, so far, lacks in antivirus; one prime reason OneCare was axed was its failure to make a dent on Symantec or McAfee's sales; some consumers possibly bucked against paying for Microsoft software that was often-times working to plug holes in other Microsoft products).

And at the small business end of things, Symantec has just unveilled Endpoint Protection, a new product that makes it easier to deploy, manage and control a security solution for a small company (more on EndPoint in this Friday's print edition of NBR).