Labs

VirusScan is often pitted against Norton AntiVirus, not least because both are available in high street shops. Home Edition 8 is effective and comes with similar features to Norton's product. It doesn't look as nice, but while ease of use is important we're just as concerned with its virus detection abilities. And we can't fault this version of McAfee's anti-virus software as far as fighting viruses is concerned.

The e-mail scanner found almost every file, and the real-time scanner stopped and deleted the remaining infected attachments when we tried to save and run them. It suffered from a similar problem to Norton AntiVirus 2005. On downloading a number of infected messages the scanner paused the download. You can change the options in both programs to prevent these alerts, and we'd advise that you do, particularly when there's an effective e-mail worm running wild. Otherwise you'll spend a long time downloading mail manually.

You can create rescue floppy disks, which is a welcome addition, although it's more trouble than having ready access to a bootable CD such as Norton's. Scheduling is easy and uses Windows' own Scheduled Tasks facility, which you'll find

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in the Control Panel. Automatic virus updates are regular and easy to install after the first attempt. Initially, though, you find yourself in a bizarre registration system that involves logging into McAfee's Web site at least twice if you have ever installed a McAfee program in the past. This could be confusing to some, and it's certainly more laborious than the updating systems of all the other products on test here.

VirusScan comes with a fun world map that shows virus activity around the globe. This is pretty useless, but it looks nice. You can configure the software to report any viruses it finds, and this data goes towards building the map. This and the rest of the software's features are available through a utility called SecurityCenter, which is really designed just to display the status of various security products provided by McAfee. It's actually a little annoying, because you have to run it to get to VirusScan's settings. The alternative is to right-click the SecurityCenter's icon on the Taskbar and navigate a pop-up menu, but this is just as tedious.

One of the most attractive things about the VirusScan package is its annual subscription rate (after the first year). At £10 per year it's the cheapest we've seen. The package is very reasonably priced to begin with, which makes this an attractive option to anyone on a tight budget. So why hasn't it won a Recommended award? Despite being slightly more expensive to buy, and around twice as expensive to update after the first year, Kaspersky and F-Secure's products are easier to use and are at least as effective at catching viruses. VirusScan is a good package, but when it comes to keeping our PC virus free we want the best. And VirusScan is a little too awkward and clunky for our tastes.