Microsoft released today Morro antivirus program
next-generation anti-malware application also known as Security Essentials.
Morro is successor to Live OneCare shareware all-in-one security application which did not bring expected results of market share. Due to trends in security sphere and variety of Security vendors such as Norton, McAfee etc. Microsoft decided to go freeware with brand new antivirus to gain share from its closest
antivirus competitors.
Microsoft Morro uses the same engine as its predecessor LiveOne Care but this time Microsoft optimized it with efficiency and low consumptions of system resources in mind. So MS implemented a few advanced anti-malware techniques into their new product. One of them is the
Dynamic Signature Service which is a set of techniques to
find zero-day malware which suggest Microsoft may be going host intrusion finally.
Program itself is very lightweight and protects computer from viruses and spyware as well as trojan horses. Additionally Microsoft artificially restricted
Morro to use 50% of CPU power at most while performing a thorough scan. Both quick and full scan take below-average time to do the job and first reports indicate Microsoft Security Essentials Beta is actually a good antivirus application.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to test this product for effectiveness so I can not really say how well it performs. I only hope Morro will be a worthy product and companion to forthcoming Windows 7.
Download
Microsoft Morro Beta
Download Microsoft Morro Antivirus Beta
7 Comments:
Do these updates apply for Windows 7 correctly?
@Searching101
Yes they do. It works well on Windows 7.
pcterritory
Been using it for 2 days...it works pretty much like MalwareBytes, detects the same thing as Malwarebytes and removes well like Malwarebytes (they both detected the same rogue registry setting on my machine). If it continues this good form i might seriously consider replacing Malwarebytes with this once it's out of beta, because this comes with FREE real-time protection and it looks better.
It works well alongside my Kaspersky too, so no problem there if you have 2 antivirus running simultaneously (for Kaspersky, at least). I encourage those who had not tried this to do so; it's worth the effort...
Thanks for sharing your useful experience with Security Essentials James. This application looks quite promising. Thumbs up for MS so far.
It works rather well for being an anti-virus. It detected, blocked and then deleted a virus it found on my pc. Not to mention, it's so light - It's as good as the New Norton Products and Kaspersky - But I would recommend a good Heuristics detection such as Zemana and threatfire along side of it. (Threat fire in my opinion though uses way to many resources)
@mms
I tested Zemana back when it was in beta stage and I have to say although being not so popular it is very effective. So is threatfire. Some users indeed complained about TF using too many system resources and I must say I all those years while I have been using TF I saw severe cpu consumption only when TF updated itself. At that time cpu consumption is way above normal but apart that TF does not seem to be using much system resources. In fact when I analyzed it with one of Russinovich's tools it barely used any cpu cycles at all.
Anyway PC Tools is making ThreatFire more and more a tool for advertising as each new TF version contains more PC tools ads. Maybe it would be better if it stayed in hands of CyberHawk it's original maker.
@ resveratrol
I wouldn't say that Avira is a bad antivirus, but i don't like its pushy advertisement pop-up (there's a simple way to disable it though) and the sluggish way it updates itself; there's almost something not right about its update module...
On the other hand, a couple of weeks into testing Security Essentials, i realized that it does have a weakness - it is very slow at neutralizing threats, when other antivirus such as Kaspersky deleted it almost immediately when a threat is found...but i hope it won't be a major issue.
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