Pros/Cons re Microsoft EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit)?

[IainB]

I read at gizmo's freeware about Free Microsoft Windows Security Tool EMET Now in Version 5.1.
I was wondering what the DCF members cumulative experience was regarding using Microsft's EMET:
The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit

To start the ball rolling, I have found these comments from earlier posts in the DC Forum:

MSE has saved my bacon on a few occasions ... AND ... wait for it ... it's endorsed by EliTheComputerGuy.
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I use MSE and EMET constantly, with less frequent uses of SB-SD, and MBAM. Those along with twice monthly Macrium images form the basis of my PC defense.
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Powerful Free Microsoft Security Tool EMET has Been Updated

Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 4.1, EMET, a toolkit for deploying and configuring security mitigation technologies.
homepage and download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41138
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I also had this comment from a network specialist at an NZ telco, after I asked him whether he had any comments/advice on the Pros/Cons for the use of Microsoft's EMET:

We use it internally... I have not seen much of it. I'd say once you turn up the settings in the admin tool it would interfere with apps running at times, hence why it isn't baked into the operating system... at least that's what I suspect.
DEP is included in the toolset and from my experience it crashes a number of apps, including earlier versions of Microsoft Office. DEP was a technology borrowed from openbsd and *nix variants that already had this stuff in the kernel from early days.
There's a saying about security v. usability and the fine line between the two, and for different customers that line is in different places.

[cranioscopical]

I have nothing technical to contribute but, FWIW, I have it running. On my set-up it appears to affect none of Adobe CS, MS-Office 2007, WordPerfect, games, browsers, nor a host of other software. It might well be detrimental to the performance my system but I'm unaware of it, which is good enough for me.
(In case it's useful to know, Win 8.1-64, 12 GB RAM., Intel Core i7-980, SSDs) HTH.

[fenixproductions]

I've tried EMET about 2-3 months ago and went back to not using it.

Although I spent couple of days digging through the Internets to set EMET correctly I have experienced:
- system slowdowns when gaming - I had never had "I will switch your desktop theme to non-fancy one" messages before installation and a lot of after,
- couldn't get WAMP running perfectly well - sometimes it didn't want to start (port 80 was free),
- I couldn't use built in Windows backup tools without errors - EMET was preventing too many files from being copied.

After playing with it too much I couldn't get my desktop running - all movement was stopped after logging in;)
Annoyed as hell I had to get last restore point.

[Curt]

I had EMET 5 running for a week while I was testing AVG, BitDefender and MalwareBytes, but I didn't test EMET as such. When I went back to Outpost Security Suite Pro, I removed EMET because 1) it now was redundant and 2) because of the small but multiple annoyances.

[TaoPhoenix]

EMET was annoying me too. The reasons are too complex for me to remember/fit into this margin.

(Shout out to Fermat!)