Panda Antivirus Platinum 6.0 By Larry J. Seltzer June 11, 2002

• Product: Panda Antivirus Platinum 6.0
• Direct Price: With one-year subscription and phone support, $59 direct; downloadable version, with one-year subscription, $29.95
• Company Info: Panda Software U.S., www.pandasecurity.com

Editor Rating:

Panda Antivirus used to stand out for having a flashy, ostentatious interface. These days, however, the product is refreshingly conventional, boasting standard windows and menus. We found Panda very easy to learn thanks to this familiar interface. We like the program, despite its scant distinguishing features and several misguided default operation choices.

Panda has one unique feature to which some will take an instant dislike: It talks to you. All major events in the program are accompanied by a voice saying, for example, "virus detected." You can easily tell the program to shut up, but this isn't an install-time option.

Panda's actual virus protection has its high points. For example, Panda supports Lotus Notes databases. And the first time you run Outlook after installing Panda, it recommends that you scan your message file—a very good idea.

By default, heuristic scanning is on for Sentinel, Panda's background-scanning program. Sentinel can also scan Internet data transfers. This is often a redundant operation, because downloaded files usually get saved to your computer system, but it's useful if you save files to an unprotected network drive.

Perhaps Panda's biggest mistake is that by default, it's not set to update automatically over the Internet. We had no trouble setting this up, but an antivirus program should do everything it can out of the box to ensure that users have current software and definitions. Panda lets clients update from a central network server rather than directly from the Internet if desired.

The other products in this story have either online-only support or phone support for users with active subscriptions. Panda is somewhat different: If you buy the product online for $29.95, you get online support. Buy it in the box for $59 and you get phone support as well. At the end of your one-year subscription, you have to pay $29.95 for renewal, far more than the typical $5 to $10. The boxed version also includes a manual, although it's not much of one.

Panda caused a 7.5 percent performance hit, which is on the heavy side, on our Content Creation Winstone tests. Manual scan times were excellent, but that may be because heuristic scanning is turned off by default.