If you watch television in North America, you’re probably familiar with the concept of summer “reruns.” Many television networks and production studios go on hiatus during the late spring and summer months, and don’t produce new shows. To fill the airwaves, TV networks resort to rebroadcasting old shows, known as “reruns.”
Well, it looks like reruns are no longer confined to TV shows or to the summer. Today, Microsoft released a “new” consumer security offering, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Instead of actually offering something new or improved to help consumers in the battle against digital dangers, MSE appears to be little more than a bad rerun of Microsoft’s infamous history of offering consumers incomplete and ineffective protection.
If you watch television in North America, you’re probably familiar with the concept of summer “reruns.” Many television networks and production studios go on hiatus during the late spring and summer months, and don’t produce new shows. To fill the airwaves, TV networks resort to rebroadcasting old shows, known as “reruns.”
Well, it looks like reruns are no longer confined to TV shows or to the summer. Today, Microsoft released a “new” consumer security offering, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Instead of actually offering something new or improved to help consumers in the battle against digital dangers, MSE appears to be little more than a bad rerun of Microsoft’s infamous history of offering consumers incomplete and ineffective protection.
And by the way, writing ‘MSE is based on OneCare’ is misinformation, if not a blatant lie. MSE leverages the Forefont engine, and the MSRT tool technology - a tool that has cleaned many a infection.
Hello, For me, this arrogant attitude by Symantec is rather disturbing. I have seen other recent quotes by other Symantec reps that are similar in nature. For years, Symantec put out bloated, crash-prone junk. While the 2009/2010 editions of Norton were a definite improvement, I hardly think they are in a position to mock MSE. (http://www.techworld.com.au/article/320368/rivals_mock_microsoft_free_security_software) I don’t see a problem with having another choice in terms of fighting malware. Let people decide what best fits their needs. In this economy, MSE will really help those folks who can’t afford a pay-for-protection solution. But then again, I suppose I can’t comprehend the fear that Symantec must be feeling for their bottom line. I say fear because if Symantec wasn’t worried, then they would have just kept their collective mouths shut and simply ignored MSE. I guess that was too much to hope for. COKid
Now, it needs to be said, it's not as versatile and complex as NIS, but if you can't afford, let's say, spending $69,99 for a security suite or $39,99 for a solution, please do install this. You'll make us all safer.
You'll, say, pro'ly make people who insert USB drives in your computer happier.
My respect for Norton has just dropped a notch. What an hairbrained thing to post on a blog. But the cat is out of the bag now, it's been Slashdotted and it's almost comical seeing all the rabid anti-MS slashdotters defending MS in the posts there on it. Norton also had a short video that got posted on youtube that basically praised Norton and said freeware AVs were somewhat worthless, it was posted on Tom's Hardware news but magically the video got pulled from youtube.
Funny though, all the non-profit AV test sites like av-comparatives and such have given MSE a pretty high rating and yet Symantec's "for profit" test site basically slags MSE. I guess money talks. Maybe the blog poster should have read up on MSE first, MS has even posted it does not and is meant not to replace a full AV suite. Methinks they've just shot themselves in the foot.
No matter what Symantec says, MSE is much lighter than Norton 2010 and have better detection for scum malware than Norton, and good protection is not = fancy features of Norton 2010 nor the ambiguous “very few community user…blablabla”, it’s how fast & how many you can snipe.
In today’s world, consumers need full security suite, that MSE fails, and after the results of AV comparatives and pc mag, one can easily decide. And yes Norton pulse protection is here ofcourse, and their( Norton) full security suite. Happy to see Norton is growing better and better…
First off, I do agree that symantec shouldn't be so quick to criticize new (potential) competition. They should slowly release online ads comparing how many features you get in NIS compared to MSE and hold the major criticisms to if and when MSE is found to have a major security flaw or gets low ratings from AV testers. It is embarrassing for symantec to bash MSE and then read articles like the ones posted by TomiRed and COkid.
I actually think it would be a good idea for Microsoft to make MSE part of the windows 8 os (unlikely to happen in windows 7 unless through some major service pack). As MS said it is not meant to replace full security suites. MS was smart to start promoting computer security by including a firewall, even though a very basic one, in windows xp. Of course since then it has been greatly improved upon in Vista and 7.
Future windows os's should have MSE installed as an out of the box basic protection against infections and only remind you to consider a full security suite when you first open MSE or whenever you check the security status of your computer in the control panel's security center. When you would install a third party security suite like NIS the os would recognize it and disable all the MSE features.
With 90-some% of the pc market share Microsoft could do a lot of good and prevent many common pc infections. Think about how many end users still neglect to install and maintain good security programs. Hackers would have to step up there game if virtually everyone started using at least a half way decent security program.
I did an experiment with NAV2010 last week and it completely failed to block a TDSS/UAC rootkit and was rendered fairly useless by it. Very poor.
However, MSE both blocked the installer for it and when I installed MSE onto a UAC infected Windows 7 system, it removed it.
Symantec should drop the arrogance, their product is far from perfect and has numerous annoying bugs.
Edit:
And whats more, I can confirm that NIS fails to detect a lot of common garden trojans that MSE does with ease. SONAR2 on NIS catches the majority of the missed ones, but NIS is way behind with it's signatures.
Message Edited by metalhead82 on 20-10-2009 05:46 PM
A month from then, I still don't see what was the strategy (tactic?) behind this solo-bash against MSE by Symantec.
I mean, Symantec's AV line has been consistently bad mouthed for years, and suffered from the bad reputation of its previous products even when it no longer deserved it - since the 2009 line. People ar still making jokes around various boards how Norton is ''impossible to remove'' and the only product that needs a separate tool to uninstall.
So what was the point in bashing Microsoft, practically alone? I'd think Symantec's marketing and PR guys woud know, of all people, how bad it is if someone is bad mouthing you without firm arguments to support it.
There are still major problems though for Symantec - NIS and NAV ar well designed software products, but the detection they offer is, it seems (look at the screenshot above) consistently lagging behind the competition.
One would think that knowing this, *someone* would be easy on the harsh words and offer at least a mild welcome to Microsoft. Like Sunbelt did.
