Since Microsoft released the first beta version of Windows 7, I installed it to find out what’s new. Before that, I was using Windows Vista and BitDefender as Anti-Virus software. I even blogged about it because it really satisfied me!

Unfortunately, BitDefender 2009 doesn’t work on Windows 7 and because of that I had to use Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 that had 3 month of free license for Windows 7 users. After 3 months, Microsoft released the RTM version of Windows 7 so I upgraded it and that Kaspersky Anti-Virus’ lifetime also finished.

Since I’m using Windows 7 RTM, I haven’t installed any Anti-Virus until Microsoft released the first official version of Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) which is a real-time protection and anti spyware software. In this post I want to take a look at MSE.

“Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.”

The first thing which is interesting is that it’s only 4Mb! So you can quickly download it. Besides, the installation is very fast. The only important thing is that MSE is only available for Genuine Windows Users. So if you haven’t activated your Windows yet, you’ll unable to install it.

After the installation the following Window will appear:

The installation file doesn’t contain any Virus or Spyware definitions; so the first step to get started is to update it.

Note that you check the update tap to see if it’s update or not. If it is, it will show you a “Green” text that shows MSE is updated. Otherwise, it’s out of date and you need to update it. By the way, you CANNOT scan your PC without updating MSE for the first time.

After the update, the notification icon will be something like this:

It has bunch of cool features such as “File type exclusion and File process exclusion” which are groovy!

One other thing, you may want to participate, is the SpyNet to help Microsoft improve the software.

So if you don’t have Anti-Virus software and you’re looking for one, it better to download and install it. It at least better than nothing ;-)

In order to download and get more information about MSE, please visit its website at: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

I hope it’s interesting,