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Last year's CNET Editors' Choice award winner Kaspersky returns with another winner. Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7 features a new interface and new protection. But, unlike last year, the competition for Editors' Choice in this space was fierce with several worthy contenders all bunching toward the top of the scale. For example, BitDefender Antivirus 2008 is perhaps the most improved product of the year, nipping at the heals of Kaspersky. What makes Kaspersky Anti-Virus continue to outshine its competition is its ease of use combined with thorough antivirus protection. No firewall, no gimmicks, just straight AV protection. Kaspersky also makes an Internet security suite, yet Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7 feels complete as a standalone product and not, like Norton Antivirus 2008, a cog in larger family of products. That said, there is no firewall protection within Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2008, leaving you to choose your own firewall protection. Once again, Kaspersky requires considerably less disk space than Norton. The only real negative here is the list price, which can be $10 to $20 more than the competition, depending where you purchase it. Still, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7 provides the most complete antivirus production on the market today and deserves our Editors' Choice for best antivirus product for 2008
Product summary
The good: Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 offers superior antivirus protection; has free and paid versions; supports Windows 98 through Windows XP.
The bad: Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 rescue-disc process is a bit complicated.
The bottom line: Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 is light and fast and consistently wins detection awards against the competition; it's worthy of our Editors' Choice designation
CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 holds the middle ground, neither improving nor declining with this year's offering. The code is leaner, resulting in faster scans; however, there are too few features here to warrant much excitement. Also, this is the only antivirus product we tested that attempted to download a third-party toolbar during installation. And we are puzzled why a major security company like CA doesn't provide more technical support for its consumer products. If you're looking for economy, choose BitDefender Antivirus 2008. If you're looking the best antivirus product for 2008, we recommend Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2008, our Editors' Choice.
BitDefender Antivirus 10 offers two licenses and a two-year subscription at a price below that of the competition; runs on Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP; features award-winning antivirus protection.
BitDefender Antivirus 10 performed slower than the competition; doesn't uninstall completely; the help file is a separate application to open
Product summary
The good: Norton AntiVirus 2008 provides solid antivirus protection.
The bad: Norton AntiVirus 2008 is roughly six times the size of most competing antivirus applications; doesn't offer three-user license; doesn't support Firefox; doesn't work with recent Yahoo and AOL IM applications (only old versions); offers fee-based services under the guise of technical support
The good: Webroot Spy Sweeper 5.3 with Antivirus scored as a solid middle-ranked antispyware app in our testing; it offers free technical support, including live telephone support.
The bad: Webroot Spy Sweeper 5.3 with Antivirus is optional and doesn't fully implement its antivirus protection; the combined scans are really, really slow; not all of the defense shields, including antirootkit protection, are enabled by default.
The good: Spy Sweeper 5.2 now includes some (but not all) aspects of the Sophos antivirus engine.
The bad: Spy Sweeper 5.2 provides only on-demand antivirus protection, doesn't guard against active e-mail and IM viruses and worms until your system is infected, and makes rootkit detection an optional scan.
Kaspersky Lab has produced new anti-virus software specifically for mobile phones.
The new Anti-Virus Mobile software will cover Windows Mobile and Symbian phone and be officially launched next week at the RSA Conference 2007 in San Francisco.
It is believed that around 20 million users of AVG's free anti-virus software will lose their protection on February 18 because they have not downloaded the next version.
Grisoft, the company behind the software warned users of its free anti-virus package last year that the software was being upgraded; users need to download the new edition, version 7.5.
Phishing attacks have outnumbered e-mails infected with viruses and Trojan horse programs for the first time, according to security experts.
Security mail services vendor MessageLabs reported on Monday that in January 2007, one in 93.3 e-mails (1.07 percent) comprised some form of phishing attack. There were fewer e-mails - one in 119.9, or 0.83 percent - infected with viruses.
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