F-Prot Antivirus for Windows, version 3.16c .

It is unusual for me to buy anything off the internet, but it is not unknown and F-Prot for Windows can be downloaded as a thirty day trial.
The download size is a reasonable 9.26Mb and the software is advertised as being light on resources and suitable for older computers.
Installation was quick and straightforward, with just a virus definition update required the next time I connected to the internet.

The program is fairly basic, consisting of a background file scanner to protect you as you work, a drive scanner, updater and scheduler.
The main program window is quite neat giving all the essential information needed without being cluttered.

I felt the scan-on-demand section was a little over complicated, most users will just use the normal scan, to search all hard drives and a few "power users" will use the profiles in the advanced scan, but in my opinion the scan wizards are redundant and of little value, as the options are so basic anyway.

A scheduler is included in the program and can be used to update definitions and run regular scans automatically, it is very easy to set up and is set by default to run a weekly scan and daily update. If like me you prefer the manual approach, the scheduler can be easily disabled.

The program updater can also be run manually and connects reliably to the internet. Virus definition updates are not incremental, so are about 2.8Mb in size, the updater has a progress bar, but this doesn't seem to bear a lot of relation to the actual download process, the bar being full long before the download concludes. But apart from that it is a pretty painless operation.

There are a few settings you can alter for the main scan and background scanner, you can also set the program to email you if a virus is found, although whether sending emails when you think you have a virus is a good idea or not, is open to debate.

There is no dedicated email scanner built into the program, but the background scanner checks files as you access them, that should be sufficient protection for most people, personally I always save attachments (Only from people I trust.) to disk and then scan them with the right click option.

In general use the program works quietly in the background, without the need to keep showing information pop-ups like some flashier scanners and when tested with the Eicar test virus it responded promptly, without the flashing lights and alarming sounds played by some antivirus software.

The program comes with an excellent help file and also includes F-Prot for Dos in the download, this allows you to defeat viruses that cannot be beaten from within Windows.

The software does have a few minus points, unlike most antivirus software the main program cannot be accessed from the system tray icon, which is a bit of a pain.
The background scanner also considerably slows down the unzipping of files and some programs take up to twice as long to load, in fact I found myself disabling the background scanner at times because the delay was so irritating.

In conclusion F-Prot for Windows is a stable and steady antivirus scanner, it does its job without great drama and it is a reasonably sized download, the install and uninstall were problem free, as the program does not integrate itself tightly into Windows, as many commercial antivirus programs do.
The program usually gets pretty good results in antivirus tests and with sensible computer use should give excellent protection for the majority of users.
Personally I shall not be buying it, as I couldn't live with the slowdown caused by the background scanner, but this would be less of a problem with a newer computer.

Purchase Price $29 or 23.80 euros

Web Site http://www.f-prot.com/

Rob Goldfish Web Site

Copyright 2005 Rob Goldfish.