Lab

Antivirus software

This year, the computer virus celebrates its 25th birthday - at least, by one measure. The idea of a self-propagating program is probably as old as computing itself, and proto-viruses such as Creeper and Rabbit date back to the early 1970s. However, the first virus to break out of the lab and infect home computers on a large scale was a program called Elk Cloner, written by a 15-year-old student in 1982, which spread by attaching itself to pirated floppy disks.

Today, there are thousands of viruses in the wild, and if your PC is connected to the internet you no longer need to deal in dodgy floppies to be at risk. Worse still, the internet enables modern viruses to make mischief on a far grander scale than their ancestor. Elk Cloner's original modus operandi was simply to interrupt your game with a jokey poem boasting about how it had compromised your machine; by contrast, the SQL Slammer worm, unleashed in 2003, temporarily shut down the business back-ends of half a million companies worldwide. In theory, it could be possible for a malevolent virus to effectively take out the entire internet (web ID: 106942).

According to recent research, 98% of PC Pro users have installed third-party security software to help protect their system from online threats*. Yet the market is full of competing products, and virus attacks are by nature unpredictable, making it almost impossible to know which package best responds to your needs.

Not everybody wants a full internet security suite, either. While the value of antivirus software is unquestionable, some users may not be tempted by the extra features such as parental controls and phishing detectors. Whether for reasons of simplicity, system resources or just to save money, nearly 60% of PC Pro readers eschew suites in favour of a standalone antivirus app.

This month, therefore, we're focusing on single-purpose antivirus packages. We've done a full analysis and comparison of how the most popular antivirus packages cope with today's online threats and, importantly, what they're like in real-world use. We've tested every package on Windows XP and also on Vista, plus on p100 we ask whether Vista's new security features will make antivirus software obsolete. No matter which operating system you use, you won't want to ignore our findings.

*Figures based on 2,746 responses to online research carried out among PC Pro readers during February and March 2007.