F-Secure caught lightning in a bottle, poured it into its scan engine, and then built a security suite around it. When we say this scanner’s fast, we mean buckle up, hold on to the seat of your pants, and hope you don’t get whiplash. F-Secure’s scanner sped through our test bed in just three minutes and 18 seconds the first time around, which is nearly twice as fast as the next-quickest AV suite and more nimble than the second, optimized scans of 60 percent of the other apps in this roundup. During a second scan, F-Secure zipped through our files in a mere 45 seconds.
F-Secure is one of the easier AV programs to use, mostly because it doesn’t afford a whole lot of fine grain control.
At that pace, we have to wonder if F-Secure is racing simply to come in first or if it can actually detect viruses, too. As it turns it out, it can. We threw a variety of foul files at F-Secure and hit up a handful of websites serving zero-day malware. The reason we do this is to test both the scan engine and the software’s behavioral analysis. So how did F-Secure do?
F-Secure’s sprightly scanner closed the lid on our boxful of contaminants, blocked most malicious websites, and stopped most suspicious downloads from doing any harm. The lone exception was a polluted installer that contained adware. For everything else, F-Secure kept our test bed out of harm’s way, although it oftentimes required a reboot to do so.
On the usability scale, F-Secure sports an intentionally dumbed-down interface based on the mantra that less is more. New users won’t find the layout intimidating, and while advanced options are hidden behind the main window, advanced users who love to micromanage every last detail will ultimately feel a little shortchanged.
Crazy-fast scanning; minimal interface (if that’s your thing).
Requires lots of rebooting to be effective; minimal interface (if that’s not your thing).
| F-Secure | |
|---|---|
| FEATURES | |
| Email Scanning | Y |
| IM Scanning | N |
| Spyware Protection | Y |
| Rootkit Protection | Y |
| Heuristics | Y |
| Firewall | Y |
| Identity Protection | Y |
| Spam Controls | Y |
| Parental Controls | Y |
| PERFORMANCE | |
| Scan 1 (min:sec) | 3:18 |
| Scan 2 (min:sec) | 0:45 |
| PCMark | 8,857 |
| Boot | +14 |
| 3GB File Transfer | +5 |
ferariman
July 04, 2011 at 8:58am
Why is there a picture of zonealarm at bottom instead of F-Secure? Do you guys have an editor at all?
Print
