Microsoft Essentials virus protection

On our regular local Monday night 2m net on 144.575MHz (in the all mode section) - anyone is welcome to join us in the East Cambridgeshire area - the subject of PC virus protection came up tonight. Some months back someone told me about Microsoft Essentials which is a free virus protection package. I still use McAfee here and have another year to run on it, but wonder what people think about the free Microsoft package? Does it work well?