Microsoft security essentials on very bottom of list

[JoeTech]

I have lately been using bitdefender's free anti-virus over mse. I find it lightweight without any nags to update or register so far. I just wonder why it never gets mentioned when people bring up free av's.

 

[frederick]

I find tests like these generally don't reflect real-world usage at all. Certainly they have some academic value, and they can be useful in helping to choose an anti-virus solution, but I would never base my choice purely on any of these results.

I have to agree completely. If you were to look at what comes in the shop on a regular basis for virus removals, my list would be a little bit different. For one, McAfee and Avira are just too high up the list. Trend Micro and Eset are too low.

Another thing, Vipre isn't that bad. I see plenty of computers with Vipre installed (not one of my residential-rmm customers) not in here for virus removals. I wouldn't put it near the top either, but I would shove it in the middle some-where. If you are deploying it through GFI, then you are letting your customers down if you don't use the exceptions role in the policy template. Sorry, but that's my opinion.

My views on MSSE has been this: it's great if you are either that cheap or you have sensitive proprietary software. I've seen plenty of deployments where MSSE is the only logical choice, and therefore border-protection is necessary. I've had to install ONLY MSSE on servers because any other anti-virus would screw with operations. This is where locking down the server is important, as well as border protection. It's better than nothing, but I still view it as the base-line and just keeping it up to date offers the same. But with many servers I manage, they might have to wait up to month before I approve a patch or update to hit them.

Bottom line, I take these lists and results I see, compare them to what I see in the shop, and from there know what to tell a customer what to buy and what to avoid. Otherwise, I'd be selling AVG all day long, even though the majority of the virus removals performed in this shop come from Avast or AVG "protected" systems (free and paid, usually the paid for versions). This is also why I promote, like carcomp, my msp solution, where I'm constantly uploading some good stuff to the AV rules. Even if it's already protecting against it, making sure there is a specific rule in there makes me feel happier. Our scan detections are low, are active protections are pretty solid, and our customers coming to us for a virus removal who are also on our msp plan is seriously tiny. Re-infections are so close to 0, it makes me happy.

 

[Moltuae]

I have lately been using bitdefender's free anti-virus over mse. I find it lightweight without any nags to update or register so far. I just wonder why it never gets mentioned when people bring up free av's.

I tried BitDefender (free) on few systems. I seem to remember that you do have to register (after X days) to keep using it, but that's only a small annoyance.

IIRC though, there was no way to set exclusions (that I could find). On one system I tried it on, it caused major issues with the LOB software, so it was promptly removed again.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I have lately been using bitdefender's free anti-virus over mse. I find it lightweight without any nags to update or register so far. I just wonder why it never gets mentioned when people bring up free av's.

I have mentioned it quite a few times. It's what's on my daily driver laptop also!

Only ones "licensed" to be installed on a server....ClamWin (ugh..useless, really only marginally effective for SMTP scanning)...and I think one that Fortinet made...forget what it is. While I don't mind installing freebies on those freebie friend/neighbor/family jobs....I won't do that on a server for a client.