Labs

Kaspersky Anti-Virus combines a straightforward interface with slick reporting, advanced settings and accurate threat detection. It is the only program reviewed here, with the exception of the identical Steganos AntiVirus, that lets you create a bootable CD complete with virus scanner and the latest updates. This is invaluable should you need to attempt to recover a heavily infected PC.

Family-friendly features include a password-protection option to prevent others turning off protection, and there is an email notification system so you can get messages from other people's PCs should they encounter a virus. The Update system can be used manually

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or automatically. Kaspersky provides frequent, large updates so turning this to manual is handy if you are using the internet over slow and expensive connections such as GPRS.

In our previous anti-virus tests, Kaspersky's products, or those with Kaspersky technology at their heart, stood out as being able to detect all our samples accurately. Previously, these have included home-spun hostile scripts and disguised Trojans. We expected great things of this program, and we weren't disappointed.

Not only was it the most accurate here for detecting email viruses but it was nearly the most accurate at finding spyware, where it was just beaten by AVG. It found 91 per cent of email viruses and 48 per cent of web-based threats, giving an average detection rate of 73 per cent, head and shoulders abovethe competition. Norton AntiVirus averaged 55 per cent and McAfee VirusScan 50 per cent.

It doesn't cost the earth, either, so we would be more than happy to shell out and install it on our personal systems. There is only one thing stopping us from giving Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 our top award, and that is the fact that you can buy precisely the same software, albeit with a different logo, from Steganos for £8 less.