Panda Antivirus 2008
Though it has some innovative features, it does not perform the basic functions correctly because of which it is not very popular despite attractively priced. Though it is proved that no antivirus protects the PC totally against the viruses (which has been proven in case of big names like Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky), still, Panda Antivirus scores low compared to some of them.
What is new with Panda Virus
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It catches 90 percent of malware samples
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In case of Trojan horse, detection rate is 87 percent.
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It catches about 56% of one month old signatures which is notable.
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Several important features are turned off at run time which needs to be enabled, like the e-mail scanning which is a complicated process to be done with the Windows Control Panel.
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Antispyware software against the adware and other junk is also turned off.
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Scheduling of full-system scan is to be done by the user
With all the features properly working, Panda Antivirus scans e-mail and news protocols like POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, NNTP and Web traffic. Suspected emails are flagged also.
The experience
While testing for performance, Panda Antivirus 2008 missed one existing infection entirely, and poorly cleaned the Hosts and Registry files. Cleaning infections stood at just 41 percent of the infections. After uninstallation, Panda leaves a number of .dll files which are treated as suspicious files by other antivirus.
The Trojan horse remover is named as Anti Trojan Elite. It also repairs the system security manager, IE repairer, Network/Process/service management. XSpy Shield Gold provides real time protection. It also scans the files deeply, does the complete system scan. It is also a powerful and efficient anti-spyware. The Adwarecrusher eliminates all adwares, spywares, viruses, Dialers, and hijackers. In case of a free file sharing programs, one comes across multiple adware & spyware which can be tracked and eliminated with proper process patrol.
Points to be noted about Panda AntiVirus
Panda Antivirus got the shot in its arms when in its move to be one of the top solutions with regard to computer security, when security company Secunia found out a highly critical vulnerability in several Panda software solutions which attracts infection .
It has been fixed with an update, because the vulnerability is identified to be caused due to a boundary error when parsing .EXE files which can cause a buffer overflow while scanning a specially crafted .EXE file.
Price
It comes at a price of $39.95 for use on up to 3 PCs. There is no single-license rate and no renewal discount. The free telephone support is only offered for the first 30 days after which a call costs $20.
Find out more at www.pandasecurity.com