Microsoft Security Essentials

Is Microsoft Security Essentials a worthwhile antivirus program to keep those nasty viruses out of your computer. I would have to say it has come along way since it was placed in windows vista. Yes for being a free antivirus software it does a pretty good job. The problem is it will not protect you from every virus that rears its ugly head these days. The unfortunate problem is no antivirus program will keep you safe and free of computer infections.
 If any place of business says their virus protection is 100% or that you will never get a pc virus, they are spreading false information. The only way to say 100% that you will never get a computer virus is to unplug your computer, put it in the attic and never use it again. I always hear customers say oh I don't go on the internet, so I can't get infected. So how did your computer become infected ? Oh wait you bring home data from work on a usb flash drive or external hard drive and copy it to your computer to work on. Well then most likely your work computer is infected and you passed it on to yours when you copied that data to work on at home.
 So the question is should I use free Microsoft Security Essentials or better known in windows 10 as windows defender. I would better advise you to go with a paid antivirus like Kaspersky, Mcafee, Webroot or Norton Antivirus. The free antivirus programs do not have the full protection and technical support that you as a consumer computer user need. Honestly you best course of action is to have a back up plan in action in case disaster strikes.
 Okay so what is the best back up plan ? I usually advise all my customers to take one of a couple paths. I would either use carbonite, their middle package and back up to the cloud. If you prefer to have the control of the back up, I would use an external 2tb hard drive and the back up program in the control panel in windows 10. I would also create some folders on the 2tb external hard drive and copy data, such as pictures, documents, music and whatever else you want to save. Remember the back up programs in windows 7 and 10 are only meant to be used on the computer they are running in. In windows 8 and 8.1, you can only perform a manual back up and use file history. I have seen various technicians try to run the back up and restore it to a different computer only to fail at some point in time.
 Yes some individuals think that windows 10 can just be cloned to a new hard drive or the drive installed into a completely different computer and it will work.  Yes it will most likely see the different hardware and set it up. The problem comes in with the changes in the registry as well as the system. Chances are it will fail at some point and then you have an unhappy customer and that's bad business. So the best course of action is to save all the data and go with a completely fresh install of windows 10 on the new system.