Office applications Toolkit

Anti-virus and security software

Charles Mclellan ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 22 Aug 2003

Viruses, worms, Trojan Horses – malicious code is regularly in the news, and never more so than right now. So are your PC’s defences up to date and up to scratch? Here’s a roundup of the anti-virus and other security software that we’ve looked at recently.

And while you’re at it, why not let us know how much productivity you’ve lost to malicious code in the last year, on our latest reader poll.

Product	Date	Editors' Rating	Readers' Rating
Norton AntiVirus 2003	[10 Sep 2002]	8.0
Norton Internet Security 2003	[16 Oct 2002]	7.8	5.0
Panda Antivirus Platinum 7.0	[09 Jan 2003]	7.0	6.5
McAfee VirusScan Home Edition 7.0	[20 Jan 2003]	7.8	7.0
ZoneAlarm Pro 4.0	[13 Jun 2003]	8.0	9.1
Product	Date	Editors' Rating	Readers' Rating

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Featured Talkback

Why do so many (virtually all) software packages think that they are so important that they have to be started automatically every time the computer boots? What is the largest number of "speed access", "update check", "camera download" and whatever other background programs you have ever seen running? Of those, how many did you really need?