Microsoft’s long-awaited free replacement for their awful OneCare anti-virus (sic!) software will apparently ship sometime on September 29th. This time however the flaky anti-virus protection will have gone to be replaced by the same award-winning scanning engine contained in their corporate ForeFront security package. As you can see from this, I think rather amusing, publicity shot in which I can only assume the man is introducing his girlfriend to internet porn, relieved he’s now dumped OneCare and has some decent protection instead. 
This news doesn’t come as any major surprise to me. Microsoft will no doubt have already spoken to PC vendors about bundling MSE with their new Windows 7 PCs. This would be an excellent move. Okay so the PC vendors get a cut every time someone activates and pays for the full version of whatever (usually rubbish) anti-virus software they’ve bundled, but MSE offers a couple of features that raise it above the competition.
The first is the aforementioned scanning and detection engine. The second is a simple feature that only runs scheduled scans when you’re not using the machine. It’s a simple idea and one that I think more anti-virus vendors should adopt.
I’ve been using MSE for some time now and I’ve been impressed enough to finally dump AVG, and that took a lot believe me! It’s simple to set up and use and needs no tweaking ‘out of the box’. In short, it’s perfect for people like most of my friends and family, who only know about updating anti-virus software after they’ve been hit by a trojan.
Microsoft have got a huge mountain to climb convincing the masses that they can provide high levels of security. Both Windows XP and OneCare were PR disasters security-wise. If they can convince system builders to ship it as standard though, then they’re in with a good shot at success.
There’s no final download URL yet but this is a good bet. I can thoroughly recommend MSE, go download it today… erm… no, tomorrow… yeah! 
Credit to Mary Jo Foley for breaking this.
I agree. I’ve been using it since it was released and it’s been a fine AV product; as good as anything else out there, and the price it right.
Same here, I’ve also been using it for a while now, and this catches some things that even AVG passes up. I run it along with AVG at the same time and no conflicts at all.
MS should just push MSE to all users.. I notice lots of clients comps coming in now with stuff AVG misses.. MSE is a Microsoft Product that just works well..
Now Released!
I have been using it for months and it works well
Microsoft are between a rock and a hard place here in the fact if they added it to the
OS all the big (and often bloated) AV vendors will complain to the regulators esecially
in the EU
Anyway great product that does not hog the machine
For reference, MSE uses the same engine as Forefront AND OneCare.
Stephen