MSE keeps scoring low in AV tests I went back to Avast
This was tested with MSE 4.0, while the latest version keeping in mind, is 4.1.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/docs/avc_fdt_201209_en.pdf Now if you look at the detection rates, Microsoft is lower on the end of these top AV's that have been tested, but if you scroll down the page, it has the least false positives. (0.)
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/docs/avc_fps_201209_en.pdf My final notes with MSE is that it's also less of a memory hog than most other AV's, and memory leaks are at an all time minimum as far as i've seen which positively effects the stability of the program in the long run, as well as the overall performance of your system.
Performance wise, it scored really high as well:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/docs/avc_per_201210_en.pdf AV-Comparatives is a fairly reputable source too...
Avast as far as I know is very unstable, and has caused countless BSOD's from my experience with online consumers. AVG is really sketchy, I'm not a fan, for several reasons. It's had a bad reputation for file detection, and in addition to that, regardless of the free or paid edition, it also (*chuckes*),
really looks ugly for the way it manages itself on your system... If you can imagine a messy room with clothes all over the floor and basically anything else your imagination can come up with, that's the way it treats your filesystem for when you allow it to "move in" upon installation. I think part of this un-organized behavior is partial to blame for the BSOD's i've seen related to it as well. But I haven't seen any where MSE is to blame yet. Norton, a few, but it and BitDefender, I am a fan of, as long as you have 2010 or higher for the version of Norton you are running, because they dramatically improved the performance and memory consumption from that point on, but, BOTH have great detection rates, and good features. Norton has a great firewall.
Actually, back when I had an interest in analyzing malware on a core level, I figured that Norton actually had a good chance of standing up for itself against the intrusions. Not just some lame features that you see in some of today's AV's. Ransomware for instance, in my opinion the worst kind of virus you can get... For a few incidences that i've had, Norton had stuck up for itself before the trojan was able to lock the files on my system, while other AV's i've tested didn't seem to even realize what was going on. That's my experiences though. I guess it would depend on what you have seen in the past, as to what your opinion is about certain things, but I have some respect for Symantec in the way it tackles system intrusions.
I still see people today that hate Norton overall, because of their experiences with versions pre-dating Norton 2010. 2008 in particular, which was a complete memory hog. It would bog down the rest of the system itself so much that they couldn't hardly have 2 instances of a webbrowser open almost...
Aside from that, I do agree with most of your post. I can understand that the needs of a computer user differ from person to person. Each computer user will have different needs, and with that, probably affects their decision on the type of operating system they get(?), hardware, software, etc... For me, I think these features are great, because I am a computer explorer, and programmer. The way things work on a core level and within the kernel itself, interests me, so my range of interests are fairly vast when it comes to computers, regardless of the OS I have. It's a learning tool for me.
From my knowledge, perhaps the reason why you'll want to upgrade to Windows 8 in the future, would be that Windows 7 is no longer considered very secure, either because of the fact that it's been out on the market long enough for people to discover some big flaws with it, or because Microsoft is no longer releasing security patches for it. You will want to move to a more secure system, especially if you use your computer for things like online banking and all of that. Aside from that though, I can understand.
I can't change people's opinions about Windows 8, I just like explaining some of the things Microsoft "did" to Windows 8, in efforts to explain why it's different from the previous Windows. I too at one point did not enjoy Windows 8, but I was like most of the people that say "Take away the start button from Windows 7 and you have Windows 8". That's far from the truth though...
~Ace