Microsoft's free security tool gets the thumbs up

Some good news for Windows users for a change; Microsoft's free-to-download Security Essentials tool has been certified by anti-virus research organisation AV-Test as part of an in-depth study of 19 security products.

Security Essentials was launched last year as a replacement for the scrapped Windows Live OneCare subscription service, and is a free download for consumers running Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 or higher.

At the time, questions were raised about whether a free security product could really prove effective in protecting Windows computers, especially when compared against full-blown security suites from established vendors such as Symantec and McAfee.

However, Security Essentials seems to have fared well in AV-Test's study, especially in the usability category which examines how much a particular tool impacts on the performance of the computer it is running on.

This tallies with feedback from reviewers and testers, who have previously praised the tool for its unobtrusive operation. Some security suites can slow down a PC alarmingly.

In terms of protection, Security Essentials was still rated as less effective than Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2010 or AVG: Internet Security 9.0, both of which are paid-for suites, but Microsoft has always maintained that the product is aimed at those users who would otherwise have no protection at all, rather than at taking market share from other security vendors.