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NEWS: Microsoft Security Essentials sees 1.5 million downloads

Amy-Mae Elliott — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:50:10 +0100

Free anti-virus solution hits milestone in first week

After a roll-out to 19 countries, Microsoft has revealed some stats relevant to the release of its Security Essentials security software.

In the first week Microsoft saw well over 1.5 million downloads of the security suite, but admits "the price (free to Windows users) is hard to beat!"

As far as successful detections goes, Microsoft says up to 6 October it's seen almost four million detections on 535,752 distinct machines.

In terms of the OS split, 33% of downloads were to XP machines, 23% to PCs running Vista and a whopping 44% of downloads were on machines running Windows 7.

Microsoft says overall its seem "far more detections per XP machine, with the fewest from Windows 7". ?

Ahead of the general release of Windows 7 on 22 October Microsoft states: "this follows our usual observed trend of seeing less malware on newer OSes and service packs".?

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Tags: Software Microsoft Security software Viruses And Malware Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials sees 1.5 million downloads originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:50:10 +0100

NEWS: New AVG 9.0 available this month

Amy-Mae Elliott — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:33:56 +0100

Both paid-for and free versions

AVG Technologies has announced that its next free and paid-for internet security products, AVG 9.0, will be available this month.

"Significant enhancements" in speed see a 50% faster boast, while levels of protection, ease of use and end user experience are all said to be improved.

"AVG 9.0 will provide home computer users with a more powerful and more streamlined solution that adds protection without impacting user experience, taking us back to our core strength of low impact, high performance security", said J.R. Smith, the CEO of AVG.

The complete AVG 9.0 paid family of products is available now, priced from ?39.99 for a year. AVG Free 9.0 will be available mid-October.

NEWS: Microsoft's free antivirus now available

Duncan Geere — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:23:46 +0100

Security Essentials graduates from beta

Microsoft's free antivirus package, "Microsoft Security Essentials", is now available to anyone, just over three months after it went into a beta test period in June that was limited to US users.

But now everyone can grab the bare-bones security package from Microsoft's website. It's a replacement from the company's paid-for OneCare package that never met with great success, being trumped by McAfee, Symantec and other companies whose products are preloaded on new computers.

Other companies, like AVG and Avast!, provide free antivirus software, and it's these that will likely be most hurt by Microsoft's move. Although some have accused McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro of producing bloated software that consumes system resources, it's difficult to fault them on the strength of their protection.

Security Essentials is free, available now, and works on XP, Vista and Windows 7. There's a link to download it below.

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