Yeah, MSE is the home version of MS Forefront, which we use at work, work is only a school but we put our faith in it here...

im trying to decide what to use as my secondary AV (my laptop has MSE atm and id like my DT to have something different as a back up. I was a faithful user of AVG until a major f*ck up a few years ago which im still trying to recover from (seriously!). any advice in my situation? or is it really just the same as above?

FWIW: Years ago Norton was go to (and everyone's back then) was my go to for piece of mind with a trend micro online scan once every few months - fast forward many many years and were where we are now :p