Microsoft has released some first-week usage statistics of its new antivirus application, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Redmond made the program available to users in 19 countries on September 29, and it accumulated 1.5 million downloads in the first seven days -- though, it's unknown how many individual systems are actually running the product. That said, Microsoft does know how many computers are infected.

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As far as I am concerned, this is a set of meaningless statistics... based on how many use MSE, and the number of downloads.

Microsoft collects the statistics and tells us what their marketing department wants them to tell us.

Maybe Raybay, but the product is free. Marketing or not, something free that is adopted and working well is a good gesture.

How would M$ even generate this statistic? It seems that MSE "phones home" every time it gets a hit off malware.

Frankly I don't know if this is good or bad. Well, good I suppose if you want your samples to go toward improving the product (if that's what actually happens), but quite bad if you value your privacy and internet bandwidth.

Is there a check box opt out for this?

Indeed, we all dearly love our free security programs. I know I sure do!

Yes. I'm currently running it, and it's fine. On installation it asks you if you want to participate in the "phone home" system, just like Windows, Office, and most other commercial products that ask for automatic customer feedback. I all likeliness, most of the machines running MSE (1.7 downloads >> 500000) were infected, but a lot chose not to tell MS.

I just installed it and you do NOT have to participate in the "phone home" option. It's a pretty nice program that doesn't suck up resources and runs very smoothly. It's very much like Windows Defender although probably updated and improved. I'm going to keep it as several different programs of this type are always good to have and the price is right (free).

I'm running it on my home pc and installed it on a customers pc the other day. Both ran fine and she has xp with 512mb ram. You do get the opt out option during install so it's big brother if you want it to be. A good product thus far and I might replace avg on my parents 2 machines.

I installed it on my Windows 7 RC1 (64-bit) machine and was surprised that it immediately found two infected files that AVG Free had not ever detected. I am going to install it on the rest of our home computers (all running XP).

I'm satisfied with Avira Free but I still thought I'd give this a chance. Unfortunately it didn't install on Windows 7 RC1 which I thought was due to the RC build, but based on the message above I can now see that wasn't it.

MSE consumes too much memory, hangs the computer, and takes forever to scan.

maxim: "You get what you pay for." In this case, it's free. So don't expect anything revolutionary.

I completely disagree. MSE is exactly the opposite of what you describe.

It's light weight (a silly argument in a world of multi-threaded computers with 4GB RAM anyway, but that's a different discussion), doesn't hang and seems to scan in a decent amount of time.

Best of all, the interface is very simple and intuitive so that your average user can easily navigate the options and disinfect their own computer and perhaps even better, it actually seems to work. After using it and installing on several infected systems, I've yet to run into a virus that it could not actual remove itself.

I don't really trust MS all that much and I have almost as much contempt for them as the next guy, but you have to admit some of their products really are pretty good. This is one of those products.

i,m runing it on my XP PC use's menmory,no hangs. and scan a little slow. But I can live with it.So for free by M$ its a good thing.

This does NOT soak up resources to any significant degree at all! The FULL scan mode depending on the size of your drive(s) can indeed be a long scan. However, I find a deep scan to be preferential to these zippy programs that "claim" they've adequately and thoroughly scanned everything within just a couple of minutes . . . yeah right. An accurate FULL scan for a deep rooted clever virus should take time and the process of checking for these doesn't need to be a horse race. I'd rather have it scan my computer "Right" than scan it "Right Now".

At least its working and helping users keep clean.every anti virus takes time to scan. that is indicative that it is hard working

Been running it for a week now and I must say my system seems much faster than when I was running Norton 360. I'm liking it so far. Good job MS.

Simple. Count the number of downloads of the latest virus/malware signatures.

Oops... I was quoting on number of machines running it. Not the infection rate. For infection rate, you are right... it would have to phone home. Installing MSE, you get a box saying you are subscribed to the Microsoft Spynet network *cough*. So I would presume that is another name for their phone home service.

I personally wouldn't care if Microsoft was phoning home...I don't think they are stalking people o.o.

I have to say i don't really trust a security program made by M$. And I really don't like the idea of telling them any more than I absolutely have to about me or my system. I think I will stick with other free anti-virus software and anti-spyware software.

It runs fine and only 'consumes tons of ram' when in active scan mode. Even then it's barely 100 mb, big deal in 2009.