Hardware Geeks

After I reviewed NIS 2009 and gave it a nice review, I figured it was only fair that I check out other security products as well. So I will be reviewing McAfees Anti Virus software and Windows Onecare and will have a review in a week or two for those but today I bring you the review for Panda Internet Security (IS) 2009.

Since I pretty much installed NIS 2009 on a clean system, it would only be fair to do the same for Panda IS 2009, so since I just recieved the HP Pavillion dv4 I figured it would be the best subject to test the Panda software on.

So that is what I did, I installed Panda Internet Security 2009 on the dv4, it took about 8 minutes to install completely. I also had to reboot my system which kind of sucked but most security programs require that you do so after an install.

Prior to installing the software I had timed how long the dv4 took to get to the Vista Desktop several times, and it averaged 43 seconds, after the software was installed I rebooted the system several times again and it averaged 45 seconds. Not much of a difference and nothing to complain about.

After I timed my system to see how long it would take to boot up with Pandas software, I decided to open up the software and try it out and I have to say it has a pretty nice user interface that is easy to understand, so easy my mom could probably figure it out.

However even though the interface was easy to understand it wasn’t easy to use. For example the Panda Software told me I needed to solve an issue, the issue being that the virus definition database needed to be updated. I would click solve, and nothing happened. I would click it 10 to 20 times and nothing happened. I finally click the update button on the top, again nothing happened, I clicked “Update Now” nothing happened, I clicked the panda head on my task bar and selected Update, nothing happened.

Well call me a n00b because something was happening, and I don’t know who to blame Panda or Microsoft, bu when ever I clicked “Solve” or “Update” the Update Wizard did pop up, however it opened under the main screen so I could not see it, and it did not appear in the taskbar because it was being grouped with the Main screen.

So if that little problem fooled me and caused me issues imagine novice users.

But other than that the Panda software worked pretty well. It really didn’t put a lot of strain on the CPU except when scanning the system which is expected however it also at times used up to 20 Megs of memory even when it wasn’t scanning my system. But that really isn’t a problem on systems that have 4 Gigs of ram.

The Anti Spam filter for it worked wonders, it picked up almost every single spam email I received over a 2 week period. I never seen a product accomplish that.

My favorite thing about Panda was the Identity protection, it was easy if not the easiest, but it can get a bit annoying. The NIS 2009 Identity protection wasn’t as easy to set up but definitely a lot less of an annoyance. However you can change the settings for the Panda software to make it less annoying.

Come to think of it, Panda pretty much alerted me about every little thing, 99% of the time they were non issues and pretty much annoyed me. I almost always wanted to click don’t bother me again but at the same time I did not want serious alerts to go ignored by me. So I found my self spending a lot of time tweaking the settings to get it just right for me.

The firewall also worked pretty good, but again annoying I have my home network to allow sharing of media, when ever a computer here would connect to download a file or a movie It blocked it and alerted me asking if I wanted to allow it. Would be nice if Panda could tie into my media sharing settings to see which computer are and aren’t allowed. NIS 2009 did this flawlessly.

Another cool feature was the automatic backup, which is pretty cool. I didn’t use it much as I have a windows homeserver but I tested it out and it worked as advertised. There is also an online back up option.

To test how well the AV software performed, I visitd a few sites that I know try to inject trojan onto your system and each time Panda protected me. I even installed programs that I knew contained viruses and again I was protected by Panada so while it may not always get every single little virus or trojan out there. The 10 I tested it on were detected.

Overall Panda Internet Security 2009 works well, it does what it is supposed to do. However even though its user interface is easy to understand and friendly it did get a bit confusing, but hopefully Panda will update the software to correct some of the minor issues with the software.

Panda also needs to catch up to the competition. NIS 2009 has a far smaller foot print than Panda but we do have to give Panda credit their program did perform well.

For more info and special savings on Panda Internet Security 2009 visit the Panda Website.

Post Tags: software  review  security  internet security  panda 

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