Product Reviews

Let's be honest: virus protection software isn't sexy. You won't get a shiver of expectation watching it load for the first time and you won't stay up late playing with it. If you notice it at all, it will be a nuisance. But you need it, so you may as well get the best. For most people, that choice has led to SAM (Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh). It's the biggest-selling Mac virus protection program, but it faces increasingly robust competition, principally from Virex and VirusScan. With version 4.5, Symantec aims to retain its lead.

Like its two main rivals, SAM consists of an extension which constantly monitors any suspicious activity, and an application that can be used to scan selected disks, files or folders in order to identify and eliminate viruses. It can also look for viruses within most types of compressed archives. If an infected file is found, SAM can either dispose of the file completely or simply remove the virus.

One of SAM's most welcome new features is the ability to scan on the fly all new files that are added to specified folders called SafeZones. You can define the desktop or any number of folders as SafeZones. SAM will then immediately scan every file that is saved, copied or dragged to those areas. This is a great way of automatically checking files that you download from the Internet or that arrive on removable media.

Virus scans, just like disk back-ups, tend to get put off or forgotten until trouble strikes, by which time it's too late. Accordingly, SAM lets you schedule automated scans which you can set to run either at specific times or when you start

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up or shut down the computer. After the first run, scans are generally very fast, as SAM skips any files that haven't changed since they were last checked.

Although the range of Mac viruses is mercifully small compared with the tidal wave that's afflicting PCs, new Mac viruses do periodically appear. One recent problem is the arrival of cross-platform macro viruses written in the scripting languages of Microsoft Word, Excel or HyperCard. Fortunately, SAM claims to tackle all the known macro viruses as well as conventional viruses, worms and Trojan horses.

If even that doesn't help you sleep at night, you can also set SAM to monitor suspicious activities that could indicate the presence of an unknown virus. And, for the seriously paranoid, there are various custom options to beef up the protection even further.

Depending on the other software you use, you may get frequent alerts for some perfectly legitimate operations. If so, you can instruct SAM to ignore these specific events. Most users can probably disable these without too much risk provided they keep SAM's virus definitions up to date. Updates on new viruses are available from Symantec's Web site or on CompuServe and AOL.

SAM can also update itself automatically via a dedicated Symantec BBS. However, there is no UK host for this, so you would need to make an international call to Holland or the US.

Anti-virus applications always cause problems during software installation because they sense that additions are being made to the System Folder and interpret this as potential virus activity. To avoid this, installation instructions normally warn you to disable virus protection. With SAM 4.5 you shouldn't need to - the program is 'installer aware' and will ask just once whether this is a true installation that it should ignore.

Overall, SAM 4.5 is a worthwhile upgrade to an already solid application. In terms of features and ease of use, it scores rather better than either Virex or VirusScan, but the differences aren't enormous. But if your Mac is regularly exposed to files of dubious origin, then the easy updates and ability to spot potential viruses mean that SAM still has the edge.