Microsoft Security Essentials ranked second last in AV-Test's

Commodore Pet said:

yowanvista said:

I left MSE a long time ago, it did not even manage to give me the protection I needed

If you don't mind me asking, what do you use?

I was using KIS, now am on NIS2011 :)
I will never use MSE again unless MS does something about it

gregrocker said:

This is the place where we help fight some of the most serious infections - those which have completely locked up the OS often requiring wiping to clean reinstall.

The AV's which let these slip by are rarely MSE or Avast but more often the paid bloatware AV's.

One person working in the business I know regularly sees MSE on an infected computer.

Layback Bear said:

I'm confused. Their are people who hate Microsof, hate Windows, and still use both.They hate MSE because it's Microsoft.

And they hate it because it is not so effective as claimed by many :)

What are your recommended AV's that step up protection from MSE or Avast signifcantly?

If they are paid AV's, how do they impact performance compared to the preferred freebies, and what makes them worth paying for?

I'd be interested in finding the best bang-for-the-buck paid AV to offer as a paid alternative, but would rather hear from real-world experience rather than sponsored test results.

In particular I know of several cases where fake-AV viruses were clicked in by users without objection by MSE or Avast, something which of course we blamed on user carelessness. Which paid AV would have stopped it from happening, or tried?

More importantly when experts I respect here weigh in with these kinds of caveats about MSE and Avast, it is a wake up call that perhaps we shouldn't be handing out MSE/Avast so quickly without qualification.

As a matter of interest, is it true that a 64-bit system is harder to infect than a 32-bit system?

If it is, could those of us that are using MSE on a 64-bit copy of Windows get lulled into a false sense of security?

And like gregrocker, I'd love to know which is the best anti-virus software, preferably from a completely unbiased study......if it's at all possible.

The last AV-Comparatives performance test used more up-to date products than the one referenced in that PCMAG article.

Raymond.CC Antivirus Performance Benchmark Test
http://www.passmark.com/tpsreport11