Product Reviews

Panda Software may not be as well known as heavyweights Network Associates and Symantec, but the company has concentrated on providing anti-virus services since its formation in 1990. The end result is a comprehensive range of products covering both personal and corporate users. Platinum is the weapon of choice for the personal user, and Panda advised at the time of writing that a version that supports Windows XP will be available during November. The asking price for Platinum is slightly higher than the competition, but you're paying for a more personalised service. After purchasing the software, you post or fax a service activation form to Panda and in return you'll receive a personal username and password to access its Web site for product updates. Panda also keeps a record of your details so it can provide telephone support to individuals.

Installation only takes a few minutes, during which Platinum scans the system to ensure it's virus free. It will also offer to create a trio of safety disks for booting the PC into a virus-free DOS environment in the event of an infection. Platinum maintains a low profile on your PC, with an icon in the System Tray for quick access to scanning configurations. Panda's real-time scanner is called the Sentinel and it keeps a close eye on files that are opened, modified, created or renamed.

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You can decide whether to have all file types scanned or only those with extensions contained within a customisable list. A communications scan looks after all Internet-related activity and offers a comprehensive range of options. All incoming and outgoing messages can be scanned first, different MIME-encoded file attachments can be selected and scanning can be extended to ActiveX controls and Java applets. Platinum goes one step further than VirusScan as, not only can specific Web sites be blocked, but you can also deny access to services such as file transfer or Telnet.

The main Platinum console provides plenty of options for on-demand scans as you can select the entire system, a particular drive or a single folder. It will also identify your email application and include a separate entry for this as well. Testing was carried out using real viruses rather than a huge library of signatures. Genuine viruses, such as Nimda, test not so much detection rates but, more importantly, what a product's reaction is to a real threat, its ability to repair the damage and the impact on the end user. Suffice to say that Platinum picked up the test viruses with both the real-time and on-demand scanner, although the audio notifications using prerecorded voices can get irritating. If Platinum isn't successful at automatically cleaning an infected file you can opt to have it renamed, deleted or moved to another folder. There are plenty of methods for sending out warnings as you can opt to send a local message, an email or messages to other networked workstations.

Platinum is clearly one of the best-featured products of this type and, although it costs more than the competition, the price does include Panda's superior support. Non-technical users may find it slightly too complex, but for power users who want a very high level of control over what gets into their PC, Antivirus 6 Platinum is an ideal choice.