Product Reviews

Panda Internet Security 2008 offers virus, spyware and spam protection together with parental controls for keeping tabs on your kids' surfing. It didn't make a good first impression when it refused to install on our Windows Vista PC, citing a conflict with an anti-virus program which, as it happened, didn't exist. The program installed quickly and without issue on our Windows XP system, though.

Panda gives you the option to run a quick malware scan of your hard disk before installation to ensure nothing can interfere with it. Three fairly harmless adware programs were found on our PC, and these were removed without any problems. However, after installation Panda slowed down our system considerably. This wasn't just on first startup: the whole suite seemed to run at a snail's pace, and even loading its main control screen took an age every time. This contrasts with F-Secure Internet Security 2008 (search for 189006 at www.computerbuyer.co.uk), which proved that an effective security suite doesn't have to devour system resources.

Sluggishness aside, initial configuration was just a case of following a simple wizard, and there weren't too many irritating 'Do you wish to allow?' messages. The suite first advised us to run a full anti-virus scan. This took more than an hour to complete, but it was very thorough, and all of our example viruses were detected and disinfected. The Panda range gets full certification from West Coast Labs and ICSA anti-virus testing labs,

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which is reassuring.

Panda's control panel, though, is not as clear and easy to use as it should be. The main status screen informs you of the number of viruses and spyware that have been detected in the last month, but the remainder of the information provided here is poorly thought out. For example, not everyone will use Anti-Spam or Parental Controls, and having the statistics for this protection displayed on the status screen is not necessarily useful. Showing the status of the program's online backup and system cleanup tool scan is also singularly unhelpful - not everyone will use these features, so making them part of the main status screen is poor design. We would have preferred to see a simple overview of which features are enabled and which aren't, along with an easy way to enable or disable them with a single click, as in the excellent F-Secure suite.

Mixed bag

The online backup feature is a nice idea, but it isn't properly incorporated into the suite, as it requires a separate software download. In effect, you're getting nothing more than a link to an external web-based service, and an unremarkable one at that. The system optimisation tools offer no extra functionality beyond those included with Windows, so they're a fairly pointless addition.

Panda Internet Security 2008 features a WiFi alert that tells you if another PC attempts to access your Wi-Fi connection. This worked correctly, but provided you've password protected your wireless network, as everyone should, there's no reason why anyone would be able to get in uninvited. So here again we have a feature that isn't terribly useful for practical security purposes, although you might think it's fun spotting how often your neighbours accidentally try to log on to your router instead of their own.

At £24 for a 12 month, three user licence, the suite is competitively priced, but it's still hard to recommend. It's good value and offers convincing protection against a range of threats, but lacks the speed and simplicity of F-Secure.