Microsoft’s first example of a free antivirus might have gotten its fair share of criticism and raised eyebrows but fact is that the security solution is right on track to becoming a success. In just the first week since its debut on the market, Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 (formerly codenamed Morro) has been downloaded in excess of 1.5 million times around the world, Microsoft reveals. Joe Faulhaber, from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, notes that the key contributor to the early adoption figure explosion is the price of Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0, or lack thereof. Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 is available as a free download to all Windows users that are running genuine copies of the operating system.

“Now that Microsoft Security Essentials is generally available to consumers in 19 countries, we've had a chance to go over the data, and there are some very interesting results. Just in the first week we saw well over 1.5 million downloads of Microsoft Security Essentials,” Faulhaber noted.

The software giant released Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 to the public at the end of September 2009. Compatible with the 32-bit flavor of Windows XP, as well as with the 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 is nothing more than a basic security product offering core protection for its end users, but without the bells and whistles of major security suites.

“Computers reporting detections up to October 6: almost four million detections on 535,752 distinct machines. The detections are eight times the machine count because many computers are infected with multiple threats,” Faulhaber added. “Microsoft Security Essentials is available in 8 languages and 19 markets at RTM, which covers a lot of the PC using world. The geographic distribution of detections so far still closely follows the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta countries, and is ramping up in other countries that use the 8 languages.”

Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 is available for download here.