Labs

Panda Titanium 2006 comes with anti-virus software, anti-spyware and a built-in firewall. It installs easily - after a pre-installation scan - but requires online activation before you can receive updates. The installation CD is also bootable, allowing you to scan and disinfect your PC without Windows. Virus definitions on the safe disc are old, but Panda includes an option to make your own up-to-date safe discs using your floppy drive or CD writer.

The user interface is fairly simple, but the configuration settings could be better organised and there is no option to schedule a regular system scan. The scanner checks every file on your hard disk,

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not just known executable types. But Panda is greedy. It consumed a whopping 85MB of memory and even caused Windows to display a warning about low virtual memory.

Panda's detected our test viruses, but not all the malware and it was the only product that failed the rootkit test. The program also threw up lots of false alarms. A file that we had set up to block access to advertising and spyware sites was deleted on suspicion of being adware, and the scanner falsely accused four other harmless files of being viruses. Many users wouldn't know that these files weren't dangerous - and might delete them.

Panda Titanium offers several features missing from similarly-priced rivals, but the lack of a quarantine for viruses that can't be cleaned cost it a point - you'll need the more expensive Platinum suite to get that feature. You do get scanning for e-mail and Internet messaging, a script blocker, and even detection of hoax viruses and phishing e-mails. The e-mail scanner doesn't show any pop-up alerts when an infected message is received, it just inserts a warning into the e-mail. We could find no way to disable e-mail scanning, as is sometimes required for diagnostic purposes if you experience trouble downloading your mail.