All of waste efforts with these debates of "I am right and you are wrong," because most people on forums are like me - they don't care who is right and who is wrong. We users are going to use what we're going to use and these long, argument threads like this result in nothing for us.
Well to be fair this happens all the time, not just with WD. Your're absolutely right that overall the vast majority of people who use computers in general don't really care for this type of thing and they will use whatever they want. This back and forth (especially for WD) has been going on for a while now. People sometimes get passionate about certain products one way or another, so it definitely seems like we are beating a dead horse, over and over.
When it comes to WD, I think part of the problem is that while it has improved significantly on many fronts over the years and continues to do so, there are those who don't feel comfortable yet (which is understandable), those who no matter what one says will still ignore the facts and those who haven't tried it since windows 8. Naturally those who have been using for a while and keep using it have a lot of experience with it and have seen the improvements, so its understandable that one may get frustrated and post their side in hopes to dispel some of the mis-information. Like I said however, this will apply to all products and you can find threads with these exact arguments for other products other than WD.
Like it has already been said, MS has done a poor job of explaining how the different versions compare to one another and what each version is capapable of. Naturally this has lead to a lot of confusion and misunderstanding on how it works, which is very evident in this thread.
In keeping with the purpose of this thread, my feeling is that yes, WD is more than capable of replacing 3rd parties for the reasons I mentions previously. It's not perfect, no product is, but it's more than enough. like I said the chances of a home user running into a true zero day piece of malware is pretty much zero. Unfortunatly and naturally, the fear and paranoia in security forums kick in and all that people focus on is zero day, rather than education on how to prevent malware infections in the first place. Doesn't mean it cant happen, but as the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
At the end of the day security products can't always protect users from themselves, it's why I always preach good security habits. After it's all said and done, there are tons of great options out there, pick one that works best for you, practice safe habits and chances are you will remain infection free, no matter which product one uses.
