I'm not really sure that relationship with AV vendors is as strong these days for MS to harm Windows UX.

Microsoft Security Essentials is actively trying to put them out of business. I had the impression that it was the OEMs who liked bundling terrible software.

I was looking at tablet PCs and they have some marketing term for "verified by Microsoft not to contain preinstalled crapware". Android doesn't have that.

>Android doesn't have that

Android has Nexus and Google Play Edition phones.

The Nexus comes with some HP printer crapware that can't be removed without rooting (My Nexus 5 did at least)

I was confused by that, too. But it's hardly on the level of Windows PCs.

I find it far more frustrating on Android, though, as with Windows I get root so I can remove them.

Another benefit of the Nexus program is that it's trivial to achieve root, so you can easily get to the point of removing even the small amount of bundled crapware.

I got my Nexus 5 from tmobile and it had nothing of the sort.

I got mine directly from the google play store (UK)

Microsoft Security Essentials hasn't been testing as well as competitor AVs now for a few years. Also, MSE has been deprecated and replaced by Windows Defender, even though it seems that only the name has changed.

Has it really? I need to update my AV setup then. Any recommendations?

Their detection rates have been pretty low lately. http://www.av-test.org/en/ I've been using Bitdefender at home. It's kinda annoying but seems to work fine.

As someone who works in the information security space, I've seen this touted over and over again, and repeated as nauseum in the media. However, the only place I see these terrible results is reports from AV Test specifically. And it bothers me, because I can't see why they would rate it a flat zero, when it certainly did not score a zero in their testing.

It feels to me like AV Test is being dishonest with their scoring. I don't know if they have any stake in who buys what product and I certainly don't want to claim they are biased since I have no proof of that, but the way MSE/Defender has been vilified in the media following the results from AV Test, I do have to say rating the product as a zero when it did not score zero feels incredibly dishonest to me.

Zero should be the security you have with no AV, and MSE rates 75%-80% in their testing.

It doesn't get a zero exactly, it says it's a "baseline". Sorry if I linked to a questionable source, but it's not the only place I've heard this from. AV Comparatives does the same (PDF) http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/av... Under the chart on page 3, it notes that MSE scored 80% (which is lower than the others) but it's not "competitive".

For Protection Score, it's rated 0.0/6.0. For something that's 80% accurate, included with every computer by default (and turned on by default) and constantly updated, it's being done a massive disservice. Yeah there are better free AVs out there, but given the choice between nothing and MSE/Defender, I'd really rather everyone use MSE. There's a long way between 80% and 100%, but an even longer way between 80% and 0%. Especially when the AV is no longer even the most important part of PC security. That starts at the browser (every browser) and continues into UAC (on every OS) and things like SmartScreen verifying the reputation of executables (not just scanning for malware).

I wasn't meaning to call you out on your source, just the message that this test seems to give off ("MSE is worse than nothing").

I recommend Avira to my family members, and it seems to do its job without being annoying.

MSE has been merged into Windows/discontinued. It will not install or run on Windows 8.

it's been nerfed so that it doesn't.

OneGet comes with Chocolatey as a repository pre-installed for now - not sure if it will when Windows 10 releases, but I'm sure the repository won't be hard to install.

>Having a package manager is one thing, having a good curated repo of packages is another.

So? Most open source distros have nothing but that -- all kinds of crap.

Distros have curated repos.

Launchpad and such are not curated.