Panda is one of the more established antivirus protection companies, although it is less well known to individual users than stalwarts McAfee and Norton. This is a shame because it provides a free online service at www.pandasoftware.com/activescan; yet despite the easy-to-use offering that forms its Titanium Antivirus program, its commercial distribution is not the most exciting nor comprehensive package available.
Panda Titanium uses a heuristic scanner, TruPrevent, that aims to detect new viruses as they appear without the need to download a new signature. This generally works well in practice - although competitors such as Norton have also caught up in this respect - and the AV software has some impressive extra features, such as the ability to scan email messages for phishing hoaxes.
In addition, a decent firewall is included that will render your PC invisible to port scanning, and there are also other tools to detect spyware and control rogue diallers, all presented through a simple interface (though one that's harder to access for advanced features).
Panda Titanium will make few demands on your PC, in contrast to most security programs which tend to become bloated when exploiting system resources. The pricing structure isn't so good: our review is of the six-month subscription version, which is expensive when you realise that most other programs offer free updates for a year though. Longer subscriptions are available too.
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