Windows Defender goes 'gold' at last

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Thursday, 26 October 2006

Microsoft is the last company in the world to finally deliver a working, reliable and free anti-spyware solution for their own OS, Windows XP. Better late than never, it works remarkably well, and for most home and small business users, is a must-download new program.

When the first anti-spyware packages such as Spybot and AdAware just a few short years ago, spyware was still relatively new - but growing very fast.

Spybot and AdAware quickly sprang onto the scene to help Internet users eliminate spyware from their systems easily and free of charge.

Traditional Internet security companies were slow to realise they needed to include anti-spyware software in their Internet Security software suites - it wouldn't be until 2004-5 versions that they started taking it seriously.

But even then, the early efforts just weren’t as good as Spybot or AdAware – with these two programs still very popular and free to download today.

It has to be said that the 2007 versions of most Internet security packages are much more sophisticated, with excellent anti-spyware tools all their own. So it is now with Microsoft, who have at last released Windows Defender as a finished, working and free to download product.

Windows Defender works proactively to stop spyware from even installing in the first place, although if spyware still gets on, it’s easy to detect and remove. If you remove the wrong thing, it’s easy to restore that back. That’s in addition to a range of other features that really make this a top-notch anti-spyware package that should be installed.

It would have been nice to see Microsoft taking action when spyware first started appearing with an anti-spyware program. It could have saved a lot of people a lot of heartache from the spyware mess over the past two or three years...

Microsoft did introduce with the XP Service Pack 2 a range of improvements to IE6 to make it much harder for spyware to install, but even that was not enough to prevent all spyware attacks. What Microsoft needed was its own software.

They didn’t code their own from scratch, but purchased Giant Anti-Spyware. Over the past couple of years, they’ve been steadily enhancing it, even changing the name from Microsoft Anti-Spyware to Windows Defender.

Baseline security will be improved by anyone that uses it, as will be the case with Internet Explorer 7, although once again this should have been done two or three years ago. At least we have it available now...

Should you run Windows Defender if you are already running an Internet security package with anti-spyware inside? In the case of spyware, it has been beneficial to run two anti-spyware programs, in case one picks up something the other does not, and vice versa.

Personal experience with the beta 2 version of Windows Defender and a mainstream Internet Security package did not indicate any issues, while Vista and Trend Micro's PC-Cillin for Vista are also co-existing quite happily on my own machine.

This is in stark contrast to anti-virus programs where running two different programs is definitely not recommended.

To download the software, visit Microsoft’s Windows Defender site. System requirements are a genuine copy of Windows XP with SP2. Prior to download, your computer will be checked to ensure it is genuine copy. It also works with the business oriented Windows 2003 with SP1 and is already installed into Windows Vista and will be in the final release versions for consumers and business users.

It's definitely worth downloading and installing as an additional security shield for Windows XP machines.
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