NetApp is giving away free copies of the new book “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Insider’s Guide to Microsoft’s Hypervisor” co-written by local MS New England rep. John Kelbley.

Go here before November 20th: http://www.netapp.com/us/forms/us-can-200908-hyper-v-book.html and fill out the form. They’ll be mailing the books by Novemeber 30.

Hey-hey… Microsoft has released “Security Essentials” – their new free antivirus/anti-malware tool.

This is the replacement for Onecare and Defender (and I assume for the Malicious Software Removal Tool, too). Seems like MS can’t figure out what their strategy is, or can’t stick to it.

This certainly isn’t an attempt to provide an enterprise-level solution – it can’t be managed via GPO and has no central console.

Either way, this looks like an OK product – certainly a viable alternative to AVG, anyway. It does require a “genuine” OS and XP SP2, Vista, or Windows 7 (so if you’re still on 2000 or an un-servicepacked XP, you need to look elsewhere).

What do you think? Will you try Security Essentials? Will you recommend it to your friends and family for free protection? Will you install it on your own throwaway machines and partitions?