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Winner of Alcatraz Security 2005 Antivirus Review

2005 Antivirus Review

Alcatraz Security performed an independent review of this years five top selling Anti-Virus programs. The review was performed on the Windows XP operating system. Each program was given a score between 1 (being the worst) and 5 (being the best) in six categories. The categories include:

• Availability - Where and how easily it can be located, purchased, downloaded and installed.
• Installation/Configuration - The technical level of the installation and the level of expertise required to configure the product to perform effectively.
• Price - Its current price point in comparison to its competition.
• Resources - Level of hard drive space and memory the program takes after being installed and running in the background.
• Support - Options for getting help when things don't go well or need help with installation or viruses.
• Ability - Handling capability of viruses in real time. In this review we used the following three viruses to get an idea of how well the programs handled viruses: MyDoom, Bagle, and Sober.

These scores were added together to give each program a 'Total' score. Below each program is reviewed one by one in alphabetical order. We start with a comparison summary and conclusion of the products. Skip ahead to read the individual reviews.

The following Anti-Virus programs were reviewed in order:

1. Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal
2. McAfee Virus Scan
3. Norton Anti-Virus
4. Panda Anti-Virus Titanium
5. PC Security Shield

Alcatraz Security was suprised to find, that hands down, we feel the best anti-virus program available is PC Security Shield at www.pcsecurityshield.com. It scored 5 out of 5 points in five of six categories! The only point it had deducted was for availablility because we couldn't find it on the retail store shelves and it's only available over the Internet for immediate download at their website. PC Security Shield had one of the lowest prices at $29.99 and comes with firewall protection built in. As a bonus you get 12 issues of PC Magazine for free and their support was the best we found with free unlimited support via phone, email or online. When it comes to the virus protection, all the systems we tested (except Kaspersky) stopped them all, so we recommend you compare the other features available. Again, below you find our review of the individual products and see the breakdown of the product scores for our review. Good luck on your decision and we at Alcatraz Security hope you find our review helpful. If you have questions or comments, feel free to send us an email at admin@alcatrazsecurity.net.

Award	Image	Place	Points Total
		Winner:	Shield 2005 Pro with 29 out of 30 points!
		Runner up:	McAfee VirusScan with 26 points.
		Third Place:	Norton Anti-Virus with 24 points.

Fourth Place: Panda Titanium Anti-Virus with 20 points.

Last Place: Kaspersky with only 13 points. Again this is because this program crashed, locked up our system and would hog 100% CPU afer reboots. We could never get it to run properly.

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Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal

We had high hopes for the Kaspersky program because not only do they make Anti-Virus for PC's, but their primary market is corporate servers on multiple operating system platforms. We like when powerful worldwide companies decide to help with personal products.

Availability: This program is available from their website at www.kaspersky.com and can be easily downloaded quickly or burned to CD and mailed to you. It is less likely you will find this product in a retail store. They will present the option to upgrade your product to the 'Pro' version for $80 which claims added benefits like "monitoring all sources" and "anti-virus updates every hour". This is confusing more than anything. If these features are so important, are we missing something in the $41 version?

Installation/Configuration: The most complicated installation, relative to the programs Kaspersky asks you to identify, report file associations and then ask you to point to a key file which they provide after the purchase. At the end of the installation process, it launches a 'Control Center' so you can update and configure the product. Unfortunately for us, the program locked up and crashed. Not good…

Price: $41.50 to download the program and an additional $10.95 if you want a CD backup sent to you.

Resources: This program was very light on resources as it only took 7.8 megabytes of hard drive space and ran in the background while consuming less than 3 megabytes of system memory. Of course this was before doing an update, which we were stopped short of due to the program crashing.

Support: They claim to offer "day and night" support, but, unless you're willing to pay long distance for it, you might as well use the email support. Kaspersky has labs in Russia, Germany, Japan, China and the UK but no labs in the U.S. They do offer support in English and have an 800 number posted along with a support email address. We could not find any real-time online features, however. The best part is, support is included with your product purchase, with no time line that we could find.

Ability: A nice feature of this program is not only does it do a great job of protecting against viruses but it also has built-in spyware protection. This review was too limited to compare Kaspersky's built-in spyware protection to other full fledged anti-spyware programs, but still a nice feature. As far as viruses went, we did not have the opportunity to test the virus protection itself because the program wouldn't run and we did not feel compelled to pursue email support.

McAfee Virus Scan

McAfee needs no introduction. They are one of the two biggest players in the Anti-Virus business along with Norton.

Availability: Another easy to find product downloadable right from their www.us.mcafee.com website at . You are also pretty much guaranteed to find it in any electronics or computer store. Although they will try to up sell you into the package that includes the personal firewall for $30 more, it's an easy and quick process to get this software to your computer quickly and easily.

Installation/Configuration: Installation is very quick and easy and is meant to intergrate into their 'Security Center' program which is a center monitoring program allowing all McAfee products to plug in. If you add other McAfee products the Security Center is a nice central spot of review everything. It also gives you easy to read scores on your current security settings and recommendations on how to improve them. Easy to understand and very helpful.

Price: $34.99 for a 'One year subscription' after which time you will be presented to renew your subscription or just stop receiving virus update patterns. These are important files to tell the anti-virus program what the viruses look like and how to handle them.

Resources: Although McAfee was light on hard disk space, it was a little more resourceful with system memory becuase not only is it running the real-time protection but also the security console that is a daskboard for all the other McAfee products. Although a nice feature, you will want to consider it on a system you concerned about programs taking extra resources.

Support: This product comes with email support and a Live Chat option which is really cool. It's the next best thing to just calling someone. Though Alcatraz Security feels you should have phone access to virus support because viruses have been known to disable your computer from working at all, or stop Internet connections. We couldn't find any support number on their website even if you wanted to pay for the support. Bummer…

Ability: There was no chance for our three viruses to make it past McAfee! Stopped them right away and totally eradicated them without a sweat. Not much else to say.

Norton Anti-Virus

Like we said above, Norton needs to introduction. They have been the top selling anti-virus program for the last four years.

Availability: You will easily find Norton in the retail computer and software stores and will also have the ability to download it immediately from their website at www.symantec.com. Norton will also try to up-sell you like everyone else for $20 more for their Internet Security package that adds firewall, privacy control, anti-spam, and parental control which is actually a pretty fantastic deal.

Installation/Configuration: Very straight forward and easy installation that was dependant and not looking forward to the intergration of other Norton products, like McAfee does. After the installation it prompts you to click 'OK' for an update. This goes smooth and displays its progress. After this simple step you are good to go.

Price: $49.95 for the download or the package. There is a $7.65 charge for shipping the package if you choose it instead of downloading it. Other products allow you download and ship it for and additional charge. Norton prefers one or the other.

Resources: Using only twelve megabytes of disk space and eight megabytes of system memory, while doing real time monitoring, is very good.

Support: With the purchase you receive one year free online and email support. They also offer phone support but it will cost you $29.95 per incident. Too bad it's not included, but it is still nice you have the option in the sad situation where you cannot get to the Internet.

Ability: Norton also had no problems stopping all three viruses dead in their tracks.

Panda Anti-Virus Titanium

Availability: By typing in 'Panda' into your favorite search engine you are more likely to find these anti-virus manufacturers than the cuddly looking black and white mammal of Asia. Though you probably will not find this product in stores, it can also be easily downloaded from their website at www.pandasoftware.com. They do have several anti-virus products that cost more and include more features like firewall and other security features. Unlike the competition, Panda doesn't try to up sell you during the check out process! Wow… I think that's worth a point.

Installation/Configuration: Installation of this program was extremely easy and a nice treat was to see Panda scanning our system memory and boot sector before doing a system install. Installation was completed without any problem. It did detect that we had other anti-virus programs installed (not running) and asked us to remove them which is a sign of an intelligent software program.

Price: Panda's pricing structure is unique. Instead of just purchasing one year, like the typical anti-virus programs, you can purchase six months, one year, two years, and even three. But, to keep the playing field fair, the one year program cost $49.95 for the box or the download. If you want to buy the box on their website, you will more than likely be directed to call them so they can tell you where to drive too and pick it up.

Resources: Panda uses several processes called 'apvxdwin.exe', 'avengine', and 'pavsrv.exe'. Combined, these processes use twenty megabytes of system memory to run in the background and about forty three megabytes of disk space, which is a lot.

Support: Typical support features include email and online but no phone support. We were able to find some phone numbers on their website, but none for technical support.

Ability: This is a sharp and smart program, picking up and protecting against all viruses we presented, quickly and effectively.

Shield 2005 Pro

These guys are the underdogs and really surprised us.

Availability: We were able to download their products from their website at www.pcsecurityshield.com, but did find them in stores. They have two versions of their anti-virus programs. Shield 2005 Pro is anti-virus and firewall, and Shield Deluxe is anti-virus with adware and spyware protection. We would have typically tested the Deluxe because the feature set is more similar to the compitiors but, for the price, Shield 2005 Pro was tested.

Installation/Configuration: Installation was quick and easy. This was a small package that quickly updates on its own and makes configuration a non-issue.

Price: For $29.99 you get the Sheild 2005 Pro version for download or in a box for $5 more. The price is after a $20 instant rebate. As a special bonus you get 12 issues of PC Magazine for free. Cool.

Resources: This smooth-running program only took ten megabytes of disk space and 5 megs of system memory, making it the lowest consumer of system resources!

Support: Awesome support that includes free phone support along with your email support! We found this support feature extremely hard to find and is a nice option to have.

Ability: We're not surprised, but even the underdog PC Security Shield stopped all the viruses and removed them quickly while communicating what it had done clearly.

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