PC anti-virus 2005
KASPERSKY LAB ANTI-VIRUS PERSONAL PRO 5
RATING 4 - MOST DESIRABLE
PRICE £52 in VAT
SUPPLIER Kaspersky Lab 08700 113461
DETAILS www.kaspersky.co.uk
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| Anti-Virus Personal Pro 5 has a friendly interface that hides some very powerful features |
PROS: Powerful; loads of features
CONS: Very expensive to buy and run
Kaspersky Lab’s Anti-Virus Personal Pro 5 package is the most expensive on test. It’s twice the price of some of its competitors, but we’ve included it for two reasons. First, it is the most powerful desktop anti-virus package we’ve seen. Second, we have already reviewed Kaspersky’s less expensive Personal product in What’s New, Shopper August 2004. Anti-Virus Personal 5 isn’t retested here because, as we’ll see, Steganos AntiVirus 7 is precisely the same product.
One of the advantages of Personal Pro 5 is that it remembers which files it has checked for viruses. On subsequent scans it checks to see if previously scanned files have changed, which is a less taxing task than analysing for viruses. Regular full-system scans are therefore faster than the first one.
The interface is very similar to Anti-Virus Personal 5 and, therefore, Steganos AntiVirus 7. It’s easy to use, the email checking works transparently and the scheduler is flexible. But this heavyweight version is much better suited to multi-user Windows XP installations than most others. It uses Windows’ own User and Group settings to determine who can change the software’s settings. If you are the local Administrator then you’ll be able to use all the features automatically. You can decide which tasks regular users should be able to perform, such as scanning a folder or disk, and which are forbidden, such as disabling the software or turning down the security settings.
This is the best anti-virus software we’ve seen, but it comes at a price and renewing it costs nearly £39 per year, much more than the buying price of the other programs tested here. We’d like to use it, but there’s better value to be found with Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 5, Steganos AntiVirus 7 and F-Secure Anti-Virus 2005.
MCAFEE VIRUSSCAN 2005 9
RATING 5
PRICE £31 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk
DETAILS www.mcafee.co.uk
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| Once it's running, updating the software is easy. Registering the product is a pain, though |
PROS: Effective; good value for money
CONS: Not as slick as the award winners
McAfee’s anti-virus software is one of the best-known packages around, alongside Norton AntiVirus. Both programs have a chequered past in our tests, but in recent versions VirusScan comes up trumps.
VirusScan comes at a decent price, although there are cheaper programs available. The software detected every potentially damaging file and Trojan, and it did so without too much bother. The email scanner was quiet and replaced viruses with attached reports in text format.
The low annual subscription price of £10 adds value to VirusScan. With the exception of the free programs, nothing is cheaper. The reason this program missed out on an award is because we still have a few niggles about the way it works. For example, when it detects multiple viruses it suggests a full system scan but it offers this suggestion multiple times, even if you’ve already agreed and started a scan. This is a bit clumsy.
The registration mechanism is, and has been for previous versions, a kludge of ActiveX and website logins. You only have to run through this painful process once, but it’s more hassle than any other anti-virus software we’ve seen, including Symantec’s Norton line, which requires Windows XP-style activation.
This latest version apparently has a new interface, but the only discernible difference between VirusScan 2005 and VirusScan 2004 is that the former is red and the latter was blue. They had slightly different icons in the Security Center interface, too. There’s no advantage in upgrading from the 2004 version as far as we can tell.
These problems are relatively minor considering that this program is available at a good price and managed to fend off all our viruses, Trojans and scripts. If you don’t already own the previous version, this is good value even when compared to the free programs.
SYMANTEC NORTON ANTIVIRUS 2005
RATING 4
PRICE £36 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk
DETAILS www.symantec.com
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| Norton AntiVirus 2005 looks good and is effective, but it is expensive and updates are infrequent |
PROS: Very easy to use
CONS: Expensive; weekly updates
Norton AntiVirus is probably the most popular anti-virus software in the UK. Versions of it are available pre-installed on PCs, come bundled with motherboards and may even be included with modems and other peripherals. But is it any good?
The short answer is yes, it’s a perfectly decent piece of anti-virus software. If you get a copy for free then so much the better, but it’s not going to work forever, and trial versions might last for only a few months before updates are no longer available. If you persist with this easy-to-use package, you’ll need to buy an annual subscription. These cost £17 per year, which is about average but is significantly dearer than the amount McAfee or Computer Associates charges.
AntiVirus 2005 detected all our test files, but it did so noisily, interrupting our email downloads. This is annoying and can cause email sessions to stall if you turn your back for a few minutes. You can change the settings to prevent the session from timing out and ideally use the option that automatically (and quietly) deals with infections without your input.
Our main concern lies with the frequency with which Symantec makes its virus definition updates available. In Symantec’s own words, “LiveUpdate definitions are updated weekly, except for major outbreaks, when definitions are updated more often”. If you want to be sure, you have to download large files manually from Symantec’s website. This is a terrible way to have to get daily updates when some companies, such as Kaspersky and F-Secure, provide automatic updates at least once daily and eight times daily in Kaspersky’s case.
This is an above average package that is easy to use and effective. The updates issue worries us, though, and it's quite expensive. F-Secure and Steganos offer better value products.
NETZ INVIRCIBLE 7
RATING 1
PRICE $60 (around £32)
SUPPLIER 00 972 3902 7777
DETAILS www.invircible.com
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| We spread out the alerts ourselves to show how overwhelming a virus infection can be |
PROS: Available for a free trial
CONS: Provides very little protection
InVircible claims to “protect [PCs] from being attacked by virus or other forms of malicious code”. It claims not to need frequent updates due to its special “generic technology”.
InVircible ignored our test files as we downloaded them to the victim system. When we saved them to the desktop it picked up only one virus and allowed everything else to run. We were able to connect to our Trojan and control the computer remotely, and after a short delay the viruses started to activate and attempt to send themselves to people in our address book.
The Audit and Integrity Expert System found 200 Trojans on the computer, all of which had been created by our virus files. It warned about these problems in a report but as you cannot choose multiple items to delete we needed to make 200 separate actions to clean the system.
This program didn’t stop viruses and tried to solve the problems after they had occurred. This process was tedious, difficult and ineffective.
PANDA SOFTWARE TITANIUM ANTIVIRUS 2004
RATING 2
PRICE £30 inc VAT
SUPPLIER Panda Software 08704 445640
DETAILS www.pandasoftware.com
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| The process called WIN32SRV.EXE is one of our Trojans. Panda doesn’t prevent it from working |
PROS: Excellent interface
CONS: Poor-value anti-virus protection
The latest version of Panda’s anti-virus software contains a new feature called TruPrevent, which claims to block attacks from unknown viruses. While this seems like a great ability, it’s not something we can really test without writing our own viruses. Instead we had to resort to using real ones and hoping it would be able to detect them.
Titanium temporarily halts emails from downloading when it finds a virus, which we’ve criticised in other reviews here. It detected all the viruses but missed three of our scripts and all our Trojans. The Trojans are well known and we had alerted Panda’s PR team to the software’s inability to detect one of these the previous month.
By default heuristics was not enabled and with this feature turned on Titanium classified the Trojans and remaining scripts as “suspicious files”, renamed them but left them on the desktop.
Even with heuristics enabled, it didn’t detect the Trojans we’d already managed to install. The software is expensive compared to the other packages, but even if it were free we couldn’t recommend it.
STEGANOS ANTIVIRUS 7
RATING 5 - BEST BUDGET BUY
PRICE £30 inc VAT
SUPPLIER Steganos 00800 7834 2667
DETAILS www.steganos.com
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| Déjà vu? Check out Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal Pro 5’s screenshot |
PROS: Good at catching viruses; very inexpensive to download
CONS: Uncertain annual subscription pricing
Steganos, probably best known for its encryption and internet privacy utilities, has not reinvented the wheel with its anti-virus program. It’s not even tried to redesign it, but has opted for using a rebranded copy of Kaspersky Personal 5. This excellent program has done well in previous tests, and this latest incarnation works just as well.
It caught all our bad files quickly, efficiently and with no fuss. It has a Quarantine for holding suspect files, but lacks the Backup feature of Kaspersky Personal Pro 5. You can password protect its settings from other users of your PC, and when you do want to change options or schedule automatic tasks you’ll find it doesn’t get much easier.
Kaspersky Personal 5 costs marginally less, at £28 inc VAT, and Steganos does not yet know how much an annual subscription will cost after the first year, but we’re told it’s unlikely to be much different from the £20 Kaspersky charges. Steganos AntiVirus 7 wins the Best Budget Buy award because you can get it for £24 if you’re prepared to download it. This puts it slightly ahead of its Kaspersky twin in terms of value.