Product Reviews

Kitting out your PC with all the software required to make it useful can be expensive. The cheapest version of Microsoft Office costs around £300. A good photo editor will set you back around £70, while anti-virus and other vital security software can cost £30-50. Before you know it, you've spent more on software than it cost you to buy the PC. It's barmy - or so Woolworths seems to think. The venerable vendor of unnecessary plastic objects has brought out a range of

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own-brand software, including such essentials as an office suite and an anti-virus program. No title costs more than £25, and most are much cheaper. We filled our basket and tried them all.

It took us ages to find the child protection bit of this software, which, annoyingly, is well hidden in the settings. When you find it, it works quite well, blocking access to pornographic sites. However, it will still allow naughty pictures in the image search functions of otherwise reputable search engines (our research, conducted without any kids present, was commendably thorough). At first glance, the anti-virus function seems to work fine: it found the eicar anti-virus test file and several current viruses. But it turns out that this product is actually a rebadged version of Panda Antivirus 2006. When this was put through its paces as part of our last anti-virus group test, it missed several of the test viruses.

Along with anti-virus and parental controls, this program also comes with a competent firewall, though again Windows' own protection might suffice.