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Editor's Review of Windows Defender

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Most recent User Reviews for Windows Defender

• 

  Reviewed by: amark

  11-15-2007

  Duration of ownership: 1 Days

  Strengths: Nice looking.

  Weaknesses: Big memory footprint, even when real-time is off. Can't disable the service without getting warning notice on startup. Dang thing's always on, even when I told it to turn off. Can't live with that.

  Overall Evaluation: I tried this when it first came out years ago, didn't like it. But, in reading a PCworld review, it said the new version can turn off processes. Well, it will kill a process, but they come back with the next boot. So i't's a glorified Task Manager. A Big Task Manager too, takes roughly 30MB of memory just to sit and do nothing, as I turned off real-time. As far as finding spyware, I don't know, I so rarely have a prob with spyware, I don't know if it would help. I find being careful about what you put on your computer is the best way. Research, think. If it's free why? Especially if it's a free toy(games). So, I see no benefit to this thing. If you want to learn what's going on in your computer, use Sysinternals many tools, esp: Process Explorer and Autoruns. That will give anyone massive knowledge, and it's a good way to learn. Sysinternals was developed years ago by smart people. So smart were they, Microsoft bought them and let's them continue their awsome work. Check it out. The best Defender is knowledge.

• 

  Reviewed by: grangeek

  11-10-2007

  Duration of ownership: 20 Months

  Strengths: in XP I don't notice it's running. Maybe this is good.

  Weaknesses: In XP I don't notice it's running. Is it doing anything? In Vista, it is blocking hardware specific startup software that shipped with my system that I want to use, and not giving me the option of enabling it. Grrr!

  Overall Evaluation: Microsoft's incredibly arrogant attitude that it knows better than I do what is best for my computer is intolerable. I'm about to disable it on my Vista machine. Actually, I'm about to upgrade my Vista machine to XP! Vista's bells and whistles do not add value, and do not offset the annoyance factor of constantly having to confirm that "Yes, I do mean it. I do want to do this."

• 

  Reviewed by: expeed12

  09-25-2007

  Duration of ownership: 2 Months

  Strengths: freeware,no conflict to other softwares...

  Weaknesses: omg!!! very very slow scan!!!!

  Overall Evaluation: i guess its ok for a freeware,but scan took almost a 2hrs and never found anything...just keep saying that system running okay...

• 

  Reviewed by: jenzwhiz

  09-14-2007

  Duration of ownership: 0 Days

  Strengths:

  Weaknesses:

  Overall Evaluation:

• 

  Reviewed by: zixqu

  06-09-2007

  Duration of ownership: 2 Days

  Strengths: Runs smoothly in the background. Found things that Norton Antivirus didn't find during the full scan.

  Weaknesses: The scan took about 8 hours to finish. There still is the spyware/virus on my PC. Less options than other spyware/virus protection.

  Overall Evaluation: I had gotten spyware from a link on an instant messenger. To get rid of it, I had run everything I could think of that Norton had to offer. As nothing really "came up" as wrong, I decided to download Windows Defender. Overall, it's a smooth running program with a clean look. Unfortunately, it has less options than other companies' protection. However, what I DID like about it, it had found things that Norton didn't, which was a help. Although I still have the spyware on my PC, I do recommend downloading Windows Defender because 1) it's free, and 2) it /does/ find things wrong with the computer.

• 

  Reviewed by: Shinken1

  04-25-2007

  Duration of ownership: 4 Months

  Strengths: It's free and arguably better than nothing

  Weaknesses: Too many error messages

  Overall Evaluation: As a PC tech, I frequently see computers that display errors related to Windows Defender. This means that my comments are not based on experience with a single computer, but with many. It started out with continual notifications that the definitions were out of date, but updating indicated that the defs were current. More recently I'm seeing many computers with error messages when Windows loads, related to Windows Defender. I immediately uninstall Defender and replace it with other free anti-malware apps (no names mentioned) that are more reliable. This is a product that MS should not be releasing, at least not until more bugs are removed.

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