Not too sure about Networking, since I didn't do much of it, but MSE[I'm assuming you're referring to MS Security Essentials]? Meh! That thing was an outdated weak security solution.
Back that up, please. I've only ever heard good things about it from people who use it.
Most recently, on a rather new laptop of a friend of mine, he had McAfee[Ew] and MSE installed. Ofcourse, he misused the laptop rather badly, and it got rather slow etc etc. A full scan by MSE wasn't much use at all. Told him to use Avira once for scanning, detected around 7-8 infections un-noticed by MSE, and no, they weren't false positives either. Hence, my statement. Of course, that may just be a localised problem on his side, but that messed up my opinion of it big time. Oh, and it wasn't just that isolated incident, but others which I have seen on my friends systems previously too.
Sure, it's decent enough when you use it
alongside a decent AV software[I did, but I had enough sense not to get my system infected]. Otherwise, it would still be meh,
per my opinion.
But the only difference was MS packaged it in Win7[I think?], whereas for XP, one had to download it from their website. Didn't make much of a difference either ways..
No. Windows 7, like every other Windows OS, comes with no AV installed. Any AV that is installed on your prebuilt laptop/desktop was installed by the manufacturer.
Oh.. Well, Either ways, I tend to re-install whatever was provided to suit my needs. I don't prefer having my OS and storage on the same drive. Also, one gets McAfee AV from the manufacturer over here, which I dislike. Even for a new Desktop, I would still go with Linux, if it only weren't for the fact that I would have to emulate games[Wine/VirtualBox]. I would still go with it itself over Winders probably..