Product Reviews

SystemSuite is a full set of PC utilities that contains an able, if not exceptional, antivirus scanner.

Prevention

SystemSuite contains the most limited antivirus program on test. It was good at detecting viruses during a manual scan, though, finding the vast majority of infected files in the scanner test. It found our standard Trojan, but missed our script and customised backdoor. It was slow, though. Very slow, even during 'normal' scans where no viruses are present. As soon as you run a scan the machine virtually freezes, it becomes so busy.

No scheduling is available, and no obvious way to enable

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heuristics (although we suspect that heuristic analysis is there, as an always-on setting).

If you want file integrity checking, a virus storage jail and Internet filtering you'll have to look elsewhere. SystemSuite will move viruses to another location specified by the user, but that's about it.

The bundle also includes a firewall, which we do not review thoroughly here. It's very basic, though, and Tiny Personal Firewall and ZoneAlarm users would be disappointed if they chose to switch to this one.

Ease of use

No doubt about it: this is the easiest antivirus scanner we've ever seen. You can download updates, quick-scan single files with one click of the mouse, or pick a hard disk and go for it. But that's it.

Overall

Sixty quid is a lot to spend on an antivirus program for a home or small office PC, but bear in mind that you'll also get hard disk utilities, a data wiping program, a Windows Registry editor, system scheduler, firewall, file undeleter, uninstaller and backup software. There is more, but space is too limited to list it all.

If you need a general PC toolkit, this might be a decent buy - but don't buy SystemSuite for the antivirus package alone.