Microsoft is stopping its Live OneCare solution and replacing it with Microsoft Security Essential. The anti-virus is still under Beta version and was publicly available for download last month. Microsoft has stopped distributing the program for the moment but it is still available at Softpedia. It will be available for free when the final version arrives. Read on for our views about the software.

The installer size is 7.51Mb but it consumes around 80-90Mb after installation due to the amount of space consumed by its virus signatures (72mb). Before the installer actually installs the program, it will perform a check to determine whether the Windows you’re running is genuine. Installation was not that fast and even slower when performing the first update due to the large virus signature database.

The following is the main screen. It has very easily accessible buttons to the Scan function.

On running the Quick Scan feature, the picture below shows the screen. It has time stamp of the start time and time elapsed, the current file being scan and the total files already scanned. There’s a Cancel Scan button but no Pause button because I might sometimes pause the scan when I want to do something which require more CPU power. A quick scan of around 40 thousands file took about 6 minutes plus which was on our fast scale.  Though there’s no logging feature of your previously successful scanned.

While scanning, the process consumes around 30%-70% of cpu usage and around 70Mb of RAM (at idle, RAM usage is around 50-60mb). Definitely not a lightweight anti-virus program when it comes to RAM usage.

Next is the Update screen. Searching for available definition update did took a while. Even though the status did show “Up to date” but actually there’s already a latest signature file on the server.

Then you’ll have the History section where it logs all detected malwares on the system.

Also you’ll have the usual setting section where you nibble with all the internal properties of the anti-virus program.

Anyway, we will wait for the final version to see how well Microsoft publicize this free anti-virus program.