I count myself as reasonably informed about security threats, I've been recommending Defender / Security Essentials to people instead of AVG/Avast/Comodo/Symantec for home users.

Dismissive, brief statements like yours don't really help - they don't give me enough information to go research whether I should be recommending something else (including offering financial support to pay for subscriptions)

I know that Defender doesn't have the world's best detection rate but isn't it better than an expired copy of McAffee?

Should I be recommending EMET? Virtual Machines? Qubes OS?