Labs

Panda may be best known for its free online ActiveScan virus-checking service (www.pandasoftware.com/activescan), but it also offers a competent commercial offering in the shape of Platinum Internet Security. Falling under the no-frills banner, installation wasn't only painless but fairly intelligent as well. Plain English options explained each step of the process, although it fell down when offering a choice of a pre-installation virus scan of either the system memory only or entire hard disk. We would much prefer there to be no choice, and indeed for the scanning to be automatic: far too many people install security products on machines that are already compromised.

Once installed, the setting up is equally people-friendly with hand-holding aplenty; you're stepped through the process of enabling adaptors for file and print sharing, for example. Instead of the usual yes/no option, which can confuse unless you're experienced in the ways of the network, Panda poses proper questions and disperses ready advice warning that it's a bad idea to enable anything connecting directly to the Internet.

This wizard-based approach is a theme that continues throughout, so it was no surprise when we set up the web-content filtering that again we got plenty of default options with 'employee' being among the more common kids, teens and adults. Spyware checks are run on email and disk data, rogue diallers are automatically detected and blocked, as are any unauthorised attempts to call out from your PC.

Panda certainly has its paw on the pulse, as we can see by the anti-virus module that even performs a semantic check on email messages looking for hoaxes that might indicate a phishing attack. Plus, there are settings to prevent 'joke' applications from running when they may cause very real damage.

Panda's take on a hybrid heuristic

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scanner, TruPrevent, deals with outbreaks of quickly spreading new threats in much the same way as Norton Outbreak Control. We liked the comprehensive logging of alerts and system messages, which are collated onto a central screen no matter from which module they actually originated.

An interesting twist is the Panda pricing policy. As well as the industry standard 12-month subscription model, it also offers a six-month subscription (although this works out more expensive long term) and a 24-month one (which doesn't). However, even allowing for these variations, we can't help but feel that Panda is slightly overpriced for what is essentially a 'white box' solution. What's more, as most of its customers will be introduced to the brand through the free online scanner, we wonder whether these are the right people to pay a premium for plainness. Coming in at more expensive than the market leader, Norton, it's going to be a tough egg to crack.

Where Panda does have the edge on some of the bigger names in the game is in scanning speed. Be prepared for a shock when the mean and lean scanning engine does its stuff: it really is remarkably and refreshingly quick. Not the fastest on test here, but darn close. This was no case of less haste either: every exploit was uncovered, every threat neutralised.

Panda also claimed second position for anti-virus updates, behind the Kaspersky AntiVirus module in iolo System Mechanic. Panda updated four times daily during our testing period, which is probably a bit more sensible than the hourly Kaspersky poll. That said, when downloading, updating and scanning have this little impact upon system resources, why not do them every hour?

Despite failing both our spam tests, Panda did so by the slimmest of margins. It just missed the 90 per cent filtering cut-off with 89.5 per cent success and the 2.5 per cent false-positive ceiling with 2.9 per cent - it will take only the shortest of training times for these figures to fall into acceptable boundaries. Then again, none of our security suites look like getting near our best-of-breed, home-brew solution.

The only other Labs failing was when it came to privacy testing: Panda claims to have privacy protection but it applies this definition to spyware and dialler blocking, rather than personal data protection.

Panda is up against tough competition in this group test, and prices itself at the premium end. Given that it doesn't outshine the opposition in any area, we can't recommend it.