Labs

NOD32 means On-Demand Monitor. Confused? Get used to it. While most antivirus products talk about email protection or on-access file scanning, the main NOD32 configuration interface helpfully divides the program's modules up into AMON, DMON, EMON, IMON and, oddly, NOD32.

The sense of bewilderment this inspires is characteristic of the NOD32 experience. Try to configure and use the software and you'll run into tickboxes that can't be unticked, alerts that appear underneath

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the active window, and requesters that give you the surprising option of copying malware into quarantine. It even disinfects email in a weird way, making Outlook Express think deleted attachments are still there.

The package does have some positives: CPU and RAM usage are relatively light, and if an email is found to be infected NOD32 intelligently puts the details of the infection right into the subject line for maximum visibility. There's also the sensible option to suppress alerts for a specified period of time, which strikes a great balance between flexibility and security.

At the actual task of finding viruses, however, NOD32 placed in the lower half of the table with an overall score of 77%. It made a decent fist of identifying the most common threats, but overlooked a variant of the SpamTool trojan, which was spotted by every other package.

With its middling antivirus performance and unprofessional user interface, NOD32 fails to impress - even though it's been around for a long time. At this price, it certainly can't compete.