Panda Antivirus Platinum 7 review

Panda's Platinum antivirus software is aimed at small businesses and users who want lots of options to play with.

We reviewed the simpler Titanium version this time last year and found it very useful, if a little light on features. Platinum 7.0, on the other hand, has all the features you could wish for.

Antivirus programs are designed to detect and remove nasty bits of software that would otherwise abuse your system. Today's home PC is likely to be connected to the Internet, so it's more likely to be exposed to these files than it would have been in the old days. Recent viruses have spread themselves across the Internet using e-mail programs and security holes in Windows, and modern antivirus programs have started to address this problem. Panda Platinum 7.0 comes with a firewall program that prevents hackers and network viruses attacking your PC.

It also prevents other Internet users connecting to so-called 'backdoor' programs, or 'Trojans', that might have found their way on to your PC. Hackers use these programs to gain control of a PC, but antivirus utilities should detect and delete them. Panda found all our common ones, but let the odd Trojan slip through. But while we managed to plant a mischievous Trojan on our test machine undetected, our attempts to use it caused the firewall to sound the alarm.

You can scan your system in a number of ways: using scheduled scans, 'Scan on Demand' and scanning when the PC boots. Scanning on demand is as simple as right-clicking a file and choosing the 'Scan with Platinum Antivirus' option from the drop-down menu. The software can detect viruses by their tell-tale behaviour (known as 'heuristics') when scanning on-demand, but not during its permanent monitoring. A virus jail (which in true, sinister fashion is called 'the Hospital') keeps captured files in isolation until they can be cleaned.

You can protect your settings using passwords, which makes the program suitable for PCs that are used by novices who might accidentally turn off the detection sensors - and by experts who might do so deliberately.

This is a great program, rivalling the established big boys such as Norton and McAfee. However, it costs nearly £10 more than Norton, our current Top 50 antivirus choice, and annual updates are also dear, at around £34 for a year (Symantec charges £10 for Norton AntiVirus renewals).