In praise of Panda anti-virus

Years ago, the good folks at Panda Security sent me a free copy of Panda Internet Security. I was incredibly impressed – it found infections on my computer that nothing else had.

The Panda folks had offered me updates forever, essentially, but as I wasn’t writing about the software I didn’t feel right taking them up on that offer. So eventually the software got old. I got a new machine and switched to AVG, which was free, but got frustrated because it slowed down my computer too much.

I settled on Eset’s NOD32 because a lot of hackers recommended it because of its small footprint. It didn’t seem to affect my system at all, and everything I read said it was pretty darned good.

But this entry is entitled “In praise of Panda anti-virus.” Here’s why.

The other day I did something stupid and downloaded the wrong file. It had a nasty trojan, which screwed up my system. But I found the fix and cleaned it out.

Then I made sure NOD32 was up to date, and used it, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Ad-Aware to scan my PC, along with some other programs targeting specific trojans.

They all found some lingering stuff and cleaned it out. Yay.

Then I started having trouble getting to some Web sites – Computerworld’s Tech Dispenser, USA Today, CNN, for starters. But others worked perfectly. It was hit or miss.

I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked. (And yes, I switched to OpenDNS.)

So I called Verizon Fios support. They had me try stuff. Again, no joy.

So I went to Panda’s site and did the online virus scan. It found 300+ infected files. Holy moly. So much for NOD32. Panda cleaned those files, and — lo and behold – I can access the whole darned Web.

So once again I’m reminded: Panda makes darned good anti-virus software.