Microsoft to release free antivirus PC software

(AP) -- Microsoft Corp. says its new computer security program can be downloaded starting on Tuesday.

Microsoft Security Essentials, as the free antivirus software is called, has been available in a beta test version since June.

The software updates daily to stay current with the latest malicious programs, which can steal passwords or turn PCs into spam servers. Microsoft says it won't make computers run slower.

Microsoft has said it isn't out to steal business from companies like McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., which make popular antivirus programs with more features. Microsoft says it hopes the free program will appeal to people who don't already run antivirus software.

---

On the Net:

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials

©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

   

• superhuman - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 3.3 / 5 (3)
  For once a good idea from m$ (not that I'm going to use it but it can potentially help many people assuming it works).
  
  Of course it has to be free, if they started to charge for fixing the bugs they put in their software in the first place the outrage and conspiracy theories would flood them.
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• teledyn - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
  I guess they figured this was cheaper than engineering a sensible security model into their 7th attempt at an operating system. Or is it their 11th? Wasn't DOS 6.0 nearly 20 years ago?
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• dtx - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 4.5 / 5 (2)
  They are doing this to help stop the current generation of spam techniques. Pretty much everybody benefits from less worms and botnets running rampant.
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• El_Nose - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 4 / 5 (3)
  I wonder why do people assume that when MS puts out a new OS it is fundamentally different? Like any OS or versioning system a new first number just means a lot of changes, or improvements.
  
  Dos is an OS teledyn but Windows has its root at 1.0 which is before DOS 6. They are two different product lines, that became merged at DOS 8 ish. Windows is not DOS-- Dos was a command line interface only.. Windows was an ambitious attempt to manipulate the abstraction of how we thought about the OS. GUI's are clunky.
  
  I am not really a MS advocate I just hate the Apple commercial's -- sorry about the rant
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• RayCherry - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 2 / 5 (1)
  There is a symbol for medicine that shows a snake forming a full circle and biting its own tale.
  
  Wonder if this medicine will cure all our digital views.
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• Bob_B - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
  El_Nose: You have many correct facts. You neglected to mention DR DOS. M$ stole code from that OS to make their own. DR had a GUI before windows 3.0. If you recall Windows 2 and lower were text based - no icons, which DR had already started using, and once again M$ stole the concepts that Gary Kildale and DR created.
  
  M$ sucks. Apple is so expensive that it is a joke.
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• Lord_jag - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
  Are we supposed to think that this MS software is going to be any less buggy than the rest of the MS software? Why do you need a second piece of software from the original OS maker to fix all the holes of the OS?
  
  I can just see McAffee Norton AVG etc all starting lawsuits on this. Doesn't this sound like the same anti-trust as with netscape?
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• docknowledge - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
  You aren't far wrong, El Nose. (In fact, you're right, lol.)
  
  We were a MS shop where I was a knowledge engineer. The whole company was set up that way. I was buddies with the folks in IT, and we kept things running smoothly.
  
  I *cannot describe* my sense of frustration when the Indian contractors convinced my boss that LINUX had fewer bugs, was less of a security risk. (I've programmed professional projects that used several flavors of UNIX.) He was *convinced* that the hip, "smart" way of the future was LINUX. I told him, "It's just another operating system with strengths and weaknesses of its own." He looked at me ... like I had no idea what I was talking about. The guy who never wrote a professional computer program in his life.
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• fixer - Sep 29, 2009
  • Rank: 3 / 5 (1)
  I expect it will run as smoothly as the rest of their products.
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• DrDeathRay - Oct 21, 2009
  • Rank: not rated yet
  What is really hilarious is that if you go over to the Bug Track site, Linux distros and unix have many more bugs listed than MS OSs do.
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