For the last few months I’ve been using the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft’s own free anti-virus and anti-spyware program for Windows 7, Vista and XP. It’s now out and available for everyone to download and use.

It’s hard to know if you can recommend anti-virus programmes – it’s not as if I run into many viruses (although on some of the darker sites I visit (security people, not porn)) I do occasionally see an attempt to drop spyware or adware, usually through Adobe Acrobat (thanks for that Adobe). In the last three months Security Essentials has caught four such attempts, but of course you don’t know what it hasn’t caught.

When AV-Test tested MSE they described it as “Very Good”, detecting 3,200 common viruses and no false-positives. The AV-Comparatives folks apparently tested it last month and are due to release the results soon.

What I can say is it’s lightweight (the installer is 4.7Mb) and unobtrusive (although you sometimes see double context menu entries for its scan function). It works on Windows 7 and 64 bit (although not XP 64bit, Microsoft’s red-headed step child of recent operating systems). For now I’m going to continue using it, unless tests show it doesn’t detect very well.

You can download your own copy from the Security Essentials web site. Beta users will need to upgrade to release as well.