laurentio
24th September 2008, 09:14 PM
Panda Antivirus: middle-of-the-road malware detection results, inadequate default settings, and poor disinfection performance offset its useful features and attractive pricing to produce an unimpressive 14-place ranking in Virus Bulletin Comparatives (Independent).
The app caught just 87 percent of AV-Test. Nearly 870,000-strong collection of malware samples, a detection rate that was dragged down by a relatively poor showing at catching Trojan horses (77 percent) and back doors (76 percent), two increasingly common types of malware. By comparison, top programs caught 87 percent. Panda ranked seventh in our tests for proactive detection, however, catching just 56 percent of new samples with one-month-old signatures.
Unfortunately, several important features are turned off by default. You'll need to enable e-mail scanning yourself in a complicated process that sends you to the Windows Control Panel. Protection against "potentially dangerous files," a euphemism for the adware and other junk normally caught by antispyware software, is also turned off, and you'll need to schedule your own full-system scan.
Panda Antivirus scored poorly in disinfection tests. It missed one existing infection entirely, and failed to clean up another's changes to the Hosts and Registry files. Including less-important Registry changes, it scrubbed up just 41 percent of the infections. And after we uninstalled it, Panda left behind a stray .dll file that some other antivirus programs then flagged as potentially suspicious.
At £40 for two PCs (there is no single-license rate), Panda Antivirus is not the most affordable programs we tested and unlike most apps, it offers no renewal discount. And mark your calendar when you make tech-support calls: The company offers free telephone support only for the first 30 days; after that a call costs £10.
Forget the paid reviews Panda has paid to have online and look at the reviews left by people who bought the program:
__________________________________________________ _____________
cjj2
Good Points: It did catch things when it worked.
Bad Points: Stopped working effectively after 2 months.
Comments: My Panda Antivirus Titanium software worked for two months. The only problem was that it would delete emails it didn't like without asking. However, after 2 months of use, I started getting "low protection: alerts. When I tried to remedy them, I got error messages. Panda techies keep sending the same boilerplate telling me to remove all traces of Norton etc. from my system. I have done this at least five times. Then, after 6 weeks, another techie asked if I have System Mechanic. I had installed a trial version, but by the time they thought of this it was over and uninstalled. Even though I did a clean uninstall, the problem still exists. It seems that Panda uses a non-standard method of storing registry data that produces this problem. The bottom line for me is that I have wasted days and hours trying to get Panda to work. It is just to tweaky for me. I would not recommend it to anyone.
__________________________________________________ ____________
johnreed
Good Points: Absoulutely none
Bad Points: Locked up my computer; Cannot get rid of it
General Comments: I wanted to pass on my experience with Panda Antivirus Titanium - Panda Software.
When I ordered 2007 Panda Titanium I had a hard time activating it.
Then I received an email with this offer. Just US £19.95 + 1 month's services FREE! Special offer for Titanium Antivirus 2007 clients.
I tried to order from that offer and wasted a lot of time and could not download. I sent an email that was not responded to.
Then for some hair brained reason I tried again and I guess I was extremely stupid as I paid £29.95 (hackers have me worried, I should have been more worried about software developers!!!)
I uninstalled 2007 as the installation directions said. Installed 2008 with a total scan which found I file infected, which it did nothing about. I then restarted my computer and got the message setup failed to launch and also scan found and deleted adware. The computer loaded extremely slowly and I was not able to do anything. I spent from 10 AM till 6 PM trying to get my computer to work. I had to call my computer manufacturer to find Panda phone # on Alexa and was on the phone for hours 2x to Panda tech support, one Tech hung up on me and the other who told me he could not help me anymore and I would have to deal with it myself.
I ended up taking the computer in for repairs but I still am have all kinds of problems.
UPDATE - PANDA is back on my computer after spending hours and £200 to get rid of it.
I am totally screwed.
Moral of the story do not buy Panda.
__________________________________________________ ____________
Darmond2s3
Good Points: Sometimes removes viruses or trojans on my computer
Bad Points: Too many
General Comments: I would advise anyone and everyone from purchasing Panda Antivirus Titanium Anti Virus Software because I made the mistake of doing so and now i have to get a decent antivirus program just to make up for all the crap that panda put me through. I suggest NOD32 or mcafee.. even pc-cillin..
The program continually reminds you that it's installed and working (no matter how many times you click the "DO NOT REMIND ME EVER AGAIN" button). The auto update feature asks you to continually re-enter your password even though they are already entered.. in other words, this stupid thing is very buggy.. also tech support BLOWS! I emailed them probably 15 different emails over a 2 month period. NO RESPONSES. I even used a different email accounts (yahoo, lycos, hotmail, gmail) thinking maybe their system filtered out email accidently. Have also called them. They transferred me to a voice msg. no calls returned. EVER. Then I asked to speak to a supervisor. Same drill. Answering machine, no returned calls. etc.
AVOID!
__________________________________________________ ____________
worldcitizen
Good Points: Can fool naive buyers into forking out cash. Good for PANDA.
Bad Points: VERY SLOW SCANNER, EMAIL SCANNER FAULTY, NO TECH SUPPORT, SOME GAMES DON'T RUN, HEURISTIC SCANNER DESTROYS LEGITIMATE PROGRAMS
General Comments: Forget the reviews and take notice of users who have bought this terrible program. I bought it and have had nothing but problems. I have bought Norton 2008 as well as PC-Cillin & PC-Cillin is the BEST by a long shot!
Took FIFTEEN MINUTES to scan a game! Email scanner only works sometimes so you will be sure to get WORMS in your inbox. Heuristic scan destroyed Pest Patrol requiring a reinstall. Both Norton & PC-Cillin scanned the same game in seconds!! ULTRA-FAST SCANNER ???? Hype more like it!!
Their so called 24/7 tech support is a gimmick - sent 7 emails but no replies so far since yesterday. Update window has to be closed manually EVERY TIME you update. Option to turn it off but then you have no way of knowing if it is updating. They could have made it a 5 second pop up like in Norton.
Cannot run some games with this antivirus. Also no way of verifying that a file has been scanned as with a right click in PC-Cillin.
No email notification that an email is virus free. No notification that emails are being scanned. PC-Cillin is best so far compared to this trash and Norton Antivirus.
NO SUPPORT for this product when things go wrong. Claim of 24/7 tech support is simply not true. Don't buy it because it will allow worms into your email, delete legitimate programs and stop many games from running with NO TECH SUPPORT which is just a gimmick to get you to buy. Once they got your money they disappear like Norton so BE WARNED. I read all the reviews but found most of them must be affiliates or sponsored reviews.
DON'T BUY PANDA!!
__________________________________________________ ____________
Feel free to post your comments on Panda Antivirus please.
The app caught just 87 percent of AV-Test. Nearly 870,000-strong collection of malware samples, a detection rate that was dragged down by a relatively poor showing at catching Trojan horses (77 percent) and back doors (76 percent), two increasingly common types of malware. By comparison, top programs caught 87 percent. Panda ranked seventh in our tests for proactive detection, however, catching just 56 percent of new samples with one-month-old signatures.
Unfortunately, several important features are turned off by default. You'll need to enable e-mail scanning yourself in a complicated process that sends you to the Windows Control Panel. Protection against "potentially dangerous files," a euphemism for the adware and other junk normally caught by antispyware software, is also turned off, and you'll need to schedule your own full-system scan.
Panda Antivirus scored poorly in disinfection tests. It missed one existing infection entirely, and failed to clean up another's changes to the Hosts and Registry files. Including less-important Registry changes, it scrubbed up just 41 percent of the infections. And after we uninstalled it, Panda left behind a stray .dll file that some other antivirus programs then flagged as potentially suspicious.
At £40 for two PCs (there is no single-license rate), Panda Antivirus is not the most affordable programs we tested and unlike most apps, it offers no renewal discount. And mark your calendar when you make tech-support calls: The company offers free telephone support only for the first 30 days; after that a call costs £10.
Forget the paid reviews Panda has paid to have online and look at the reviews left by people who bought the program:
__________________________________________________ _____________
cjj2
Good Points: It did catch things when it worked.
Bad Points: Stopped working effectively after 2 months.
Comments: My Panda Antivirus Titanium software worked for two months. The only problem was that it would delete emails it didn't like without asking. However, after 2 months of use, I started getting "low protection: alerts. When I tried to remedy them, I got error messages. Panda techies keep sending the same boilerplate telling me to remove all traces of Norton etc. from my system. I have done this at least five times. Then, after 6 weeks, another techie asked if I have System Mechanic. I had installed a trial version, but by the time they thought of this it was over and uninstalled. Even though I did a clean uninstall, the problem still exists. It seems that Panda uses a non-standard method of storing registry data that produces this problem. The bottom line for me is that I have wasted days and hours trying to get Panda to work. It is just to tweaky for me. I would not recommend it to anyone.
__________________________________________________ ____________
johnreed
Good Points: Absoulutely none
Bad Points: Locked up my computer; Cannot get rid of it
General Comments: I wanted to pass on my experience with Panda Antivirus Titanium - Panda Software.
When I ordered 2007 Panda Titanium I had a hard time activating it.
Then I received an email with this offer. Just US £19.95 + 1 month's services FREE! Special offer for Titanium Antivirus 2007 clients.
I tried to order from that offer and wasted a lot of time and could not download. I sent an email that was not responded to.
Then for some hair brained reason I tried again and I guess I was extremely stupid as I paid £29.95 (hackers have me worried, I should have been more worried about software developers!!!)
I uninstalled 2007 as the installation directions said. Installed 2008 with a total scan which found I file infected, which it did nothing about. I then restarted my computer and got the message setup failed to launch and also scan found and deleted adware. The computer loaded extremely slowly and I was not able to do anything. I spent from 10 AM till 6 PM trying to get my computer to work. I had to call my computer manufacturer to find Panda phone # on Alexa and was on the phone for hours 2x to Panda tech support, one Tech hung up on me and the other who told me he could not help me anymore and I would have to deal with it myself.
I ended up taking the computer in for repairs but I still am have all kinds of problems.
UPDATE - PANDA is back on my computer after spending hours and £200 to get rid of it.
I am totally screwed.
Moral of the story do not buy Panda.
__________________________________________________ ____________
Darmond2s3
Good Points: Sometimes removes viruses or trojans on my computer
Bad Points: Too many
General Comments: I would advise anyone and everyone from purchasing Panda Antivirus Titanium Anti Virus Software because I made the mistake of doing so and now i have to get a decent antivirus program just to make up for all the crap that panda put me through. I suggest NOD32 or mcafee.. even pc-cillin..
The program continually reminds you that it's installed and working (no matter how many times you click the "DO NOT REMIND ME EVER AGAIN" button). The auto update feature asks you to continually re-enter your password even though they are already entered.. in other words, this stupid thing is very buggy.. also tech support BLOWS! I emailed them probably 15 different emails over a 2 month period. NO RESPONSES. I even used a different email accounts (yahoo, lycos, hotmail, gmail) thinking maybe their system filtered out email accidently. Have also called them. They transferred me to a voice msg. no calls returned. EVER. Then I asked to speak to a supervisor. Same drill. Answering machine, no returned calls. etc.
AVOID!
__________________________________________________ ____________
worldcitizen
Good Points: Can fool naive buyers into forking out cash. Good for PANDA.
Bad Points: VERY SLOW SCANNER, EMAIL SCANNER FAULTY, NO TECH SUPPORT, SOME GAMES DON'T RUN, HEURISTIC SCANNER DESTROYS LEGITIMATE PROGRAMS
General Comments: Forget the reviews and take notice of users who have bought this terrible program. I bought it and have had nothing but problems. I have bought Norton 2008 as well as PC-Cillin & PC-Cillin is the BEST by a long shot!
Took FIFTEEN MINUTES to scan a game! Email scanner only works sometimes so you will be sure to get WORMS in your inbox. Heuristic scan destroyed Pest Patrol requiring a reinstall. Both Norton & PC-Cillin scanned the same game in seconds!! ULTRA-FAST SCANNER ???? Hype more like it!!
Their so called 24/7 tech support is a gimmick - sent 7 emails but no replies so far since yesterday. Update window has to be closed manually EVERY TIME you update. Option to turn it off but then you have no way of knowing if it is updating. They could have made it a 5 second pop up like in Norton.
Cannot run some games with this antivirus. Also no way of verifying that a file has been scanned as with a right click in PC-Cillin.
No email notification that an email is virus free. No notification that emails are being scanned. PC-Cillin is best so far compared to this trash and Norton Antivirus.
NO SUPPORT for this product when things go wrong. Claim of 24/7 tech support is simply not true. Don't buy it because it will allow worms into your email, delete legitimate programs and stop many games from running with NO TECH SUPPORT which is just a gimmick to get you to buy. Once they got your money they disappear like Norton so BE WARNED. I read all the reviews but found most of them must be affiliates or sponsored reviews.
DON'T BUY PANDA!!
__________________________________________________ ____________
Feel free to post your comments on Panda Antivirus please.