Review by Michael

I’m a computer tech and I use a lot of antivirus programs every year so that I can be well informed. People ask me all the time what they should use, and I want to be able to really give them an answer. While this wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great either. It did catch spyware on a computer that had had antivirus protection beforehand! The main issue is how slow the software is. I didn’t notice it really slowing the computer, but the scans were very slow.

The good:n1. Found spyware right away–now it was just a shopping toolbar, but it found it outside of a scan and gave me the option to take care of it right away.n2. The install was easy.n3. I found nothing in the menus that were confusing. The menus are set out out pretty well. If you have to do something (like click on a plus symbol for more info), it’s usually said on the screen what you have to do.n4. Things were setup about like I would want them right out of the box. There is a game mode and it turns off after 4 hours by default.

The bad:n1. Took forever to install. I installed it on 3 computers: an xp dual-core, a vista dual-core, and a brand new windows 7 machine. It took over 45 minutes each time! I don’t even begin to know why it took so long to install, and the bar fills up multiple times so there really is no way to judge if you can leave it for 10 minutes or 2 hours or what.n2. Full system scans take forever. If you leave your computes on overnight or whatever this may not be an issue, but they just take hours!n3. For some reason manual update is hidden away in the menus.

So overall, if you want your antivirus and antispyware package in one, I think you do get better antispyware protection with webroot. But because of how slow the scans are, I still suggest Norton Antivirus 2011 over this. If you need antispyware protection, the free version of malwarebytes or superantispyware works great if you’re willing to run manual scans and their pay versions aren’t expensive if you want scheduled scans.

So far out of 2011 software I’ve tried I rate them:n1 Star:nBitdefender 2011–the file-sharing it does was a deal-breaker for me (beyond continued issues from previous version)n3 Stars:nThisnKaspersky 2011–catches stuff, but not well designednAVG free–works ok, not the best at catching everything, tries to install it’s annoying toolbarn4 Stars:nNorton Antivirus 2011–not perfect, but works, fast, well designednMicrosoft Security Essentials–my preference for free. I do think that it’s lightweight protection, but for value it’s great.