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(More customer reviews)Unlike the previous two reviewers, I have had a very positive experience with Panda Internet Security 2007, and as such I am offering up a different perspective. All has not been perfect, but it has been positive overall and I can recommend this product based on my experience with it.
I upgraded to Panda Internet Security 2007, Platinum Edition (I'll just refer to it as "Panda" hereafter), from Trend Micro's PC-Cillin suite after a recurring issue forced me to make a decision. I had had good experiences with Trend and was loathe to change, so changing was not something I really wanted to do. After checking my options and doing some research, I decided to give Panda a chance.
Panda's installation was a bit sluggish but it was not unreasonably slow. It did all of the prerequisite checks before configuration and finally it determined that it was ready to install itself. The installation at this point was smooth and straightforward and when it was done it (understandably) asked me to reboot the system.
Once the system rebooted, I was off to the races. Panda immediately started to look at programs that were trying to access the network, it flagged me down when I had incoming port scan attacks, and it dutifully logged everything going on. It also did something else - it started giving pop-up bulletins. Within 30 minutes I must have received 3 or 4 pop-up bulletins that contained informational messages, not alerts that demanded attention. While these can be configured to not show up, I was just a little annoyed by the frequency under the default settings. These bulletins have decreased since that time.
Panda's first order of business was to eliminate everything it considered to be spyware. This equated to deleting a lot of cookies. Most of these were benevolent, but some were obviously tracking cookies. Panda also seems to be eliminating these types of things when they first reach the system, which in my opinion is a good policy.
The firewall does what you would expect a firewall to to - it keeps unwanted traffic out and it prevents programs from reaching the net without your knowledge or approval. A program can be "locked down" and denied all access, and through the firewall profile you can make changes and tweaks to access.
I did some testing with the antivirus, and it worked relatively quickly to scan the entire system. I was able to tell it to work in the background with reduced CPU requirements and as a result the system did not slow down enough to make it unusable. As of yet it has not found a virus on the system so I just don't know how it will react to one when/if it finds one. My assumption is that I will get another pop-up bulletin.
The integrated antispam has yet to prove itself. I use a different antispam product, but Panda still does an evaluation on every inbound message. So far it seems to be properly marking messages as spam or not spam by the footer it places at the bottom of every message, but the other product I use has done the bulk of the work already. I am waiting to see how Panda handles spam messages that slip through the gauntlet and into my inbox. What I have seen thus far suggests that it will probably manage well enough. The antispam does integrate with Outlook automatically and gives a couple of new buttons for classifying spam when it comes.
By default, the parental control feature is turned off, and I decided to turn it on. This is one of the features of Panda I don't especially like. It manages access through the parental controls by way of profiles with passwords. So, when you have an internet connection and you have parental controls turned on, Panda requires a password just to get out the net at all. Granted, this is only required one time for the connection, but it is cumbersome and annoying. This type of set-up is not well-suited for family computing but is better for office and academic environments. After testing it for a little while and determining that it seems to work fairly well, I turned it off to avoid getting chastised by my family. I would likely use this more if there was a way to tell it to filter the same way for everyone without requiring a password.
Panda queries for updates daily. This is reassuring to me, knowing that I am almost always very current and have the latest signature files. I regard this as mostly psychological though, as I doubt I will ever encounter a virus that is new enough to require this tight of an upgrade schedule. The heuristic scan feature of the antivirus is likely to handle anything like that anyway.
One of the more interesting features of Panda is the TruPrevent functionality. Basically, this is a behavioral analysis of applications and processes on the system, which looks for unusual or suspicious activity. So far this has turned up nothing on my system, but it is reassuing to know it's running in the background. This kind of analysis should be used cautiously, though, as there is always a potential for false positives.
Visually, Panda is a very simple and straightforward application with a no-nonsense interface. You are not going to be overwhelmed with buttons and sliders and lists and everything else all jumbled on the screen in one big box, but rather everything is kept as simple as possible. Sometimes this means having to dig a little to find the setting you need, but honestly I think the interface is reasonably self-explanatory.
The most difficulty I had with Panda was in registering the product. I got a pop-up bulletin that offered a discount if I registered then, and I had already made my mind up to do so, so I followed the offer link. I was taken to a page all in Spanish (this is not entirely unexpected as I believe that Panda is based in Spain). I manageed to reach the English equivalent page, entered the requisite information and the website returned a very short error message. I got through several hours later and got through the registration process, only to find that I was sold the wrong product from the link. To resolve the issue I had to call their office and work it out on the phone.
With only a couple of minor annoyances and one registration issue, I have had a very positive experience with Panda. The application is not overly burdensome to my computer, it seems to be very quick and efficient, and it has kept me informed of issues as they arise. I consider this a good solution and I am happy to recommend it.
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