Microsoft Security Essentials - Day 1 First Impressions

Ok I was one of the few who spammed the F5 key when midnight was nearing so that I was able to try this AV out. I downloaded the Win XP version, and its size was about 7.5 MB. Below are my quick first impressions so far (I'll write more when I have time later, together with some screenshots). MSE provides both anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.

Installation
Installation was a breeze. I encountered no particular decision making problem during the process. Perhaps the only hiccup was the WGA check, it din't bother me as mine is genuine Windows anyway. Perhaps others might not be as fortunate as me =P. It was just clicking next,next,next, finish.

Initial Run
After it finishes installing, it automatically tried to update the virus definition file, as usual for all AV products. After that, it runs a quick scan of my system. I did not notice any lag (in fact, I din't realise that it finished scanning). I did check my task manager about the memory consumption during the scan, and it seems to hover around 7.2 to 7.7 MB only. Very impressive!

Basic Testing with EICAR sample virus files
All was detected without any problems. It manages to detect and delete the affected files (Quarantine option is there as well) as soon as I finish downloaded the file.

Summary
So far its pretty good, and it is non-disruptive with its small lightweight memory footprint. This will even put AVG to shame as I do experience lag when I run a scan with AVG. I did not realise any slowness when I ran MSE. However how good is its detection engine? So far its pretty good, but its capabilities are not stretched yet. I'll probably download a few viruses to find out :).

If you have a brand new PC and need some basic protection, do consider MSE. The only catch is, you have to be using genuine Windows.