Maximum PC AV RSS Feed

Panda Cloud Antivirus Graduates from Beta, Now Free for Everyone

Paul Lilly — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:10:13 -0600

After sitting in beta for six months, Panda today announced its Cloud Antivirus is now ready for prime time and is available as a free download for all consumers.

"Since the beta release of Panda Cloud Antivirus in April, we have been judiciously testing our cloud-based protection model, making upgrades in security and performance, and listening to our user community," said Juan Santana, CEO of Panda Security. "With Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.0, we've really changed the game, providing our users the most powerful and lightweight free protection available on the market today."

There's been a few improvements from when we first glimpsed the beta back in April, such as a polished interface, better performance thanks in large part to cache optimizations and memory management schemes, a Collective Intelligence Monitor which keeps a list of malware from the community updated in real time, and new support forums.

You can grab the free download here (and if you're a fan of the banjo, be sure to check out the video in that same link).

Sherwood Announces 700w R-904N NetBoxx AV Receiver with Web Streaming

Paul Lilly — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:15:26 -0500

Sherwood today announced another set-top box the company hopes will vie for a place in your home theater. Towards that end, the new 700W R904-N NetBoxx AV receiver serves as both a 7.1-channel AV receiver and an internet media portal for streaming online content.

The 700W box measures just 17 x 10 x 2.5 inches and includes three HDMI 1.3 inputs, a Toslink input, two coaxial audio inputs, and support for Dolby Volume, Dolby TruHD, and DTS-HD Master high-res audio formats.

Once connected, you'll have access to Internet content from CinemaNow, YouTube, various TV channels, SHOUTcast audio "Internet radio" stations, and the ability to stream personal media and content from Hulu, Netflix, CBS, CNN, ESPN, Rhapsody, and Amazon Video On Demand, Sherwood says. You'll also find a USB port in the mix.

Sounds groovy, but it's anything but cheap. Slated for release later this month, the NetBoxx carries an MSRP of $650.

Image Credit: Sherwood via Endgadget

Symantec Releases Public Beta of Norton Internet Security 2010 and AntiVirus 2010

Paul Lilly — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:19:54 -0500

Many of our readers were taken off-guard when we rated Norton Internet Security 2009 a 9/Kickass in last year's antivirus roundup, and we even admit to being surprised at Norton's transformation from a resource-heavy sloth to a lean and competent antimalware package. We hope the trend continues, and we'll have a chance to see if it does now that Symatec has released beta versions of its upcoming 2010 releases to the public.

The new version features a new protection model codenamed Quorum and will put a heavier focus on reputation-based malware detection. While it won't replace existing signature-based detection for known threats, Norton says the reputation model can detect zero-day malware that's never been seen before.

"Our new approach changes the rules by both enhancing traditional security techniques to make them more aggressvie and by making it dramatically more difficult for attackers to evade detection by simply changing their malware," said Rowan Trollope, Symantec senior vice president, Consumer Business Unit.

Other features include an overhaul to parental control and spam filtering, more detailed information provided by Norton Insight, which identifies known good programs for faster scanning, and a new feature called Autopsy, which is designed to help the user understand what just happened when Norton automatically removes an infection.

Norton Internet Security 2010 Beta
Norton Antivirus 2010 Beta

Image Credit: Symantec

McAfee AV Patch Leaves Some Computers Unbootable

Paul Lilly — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:00:44 -0500

Oopsy-daisy! According to complaints on McAfee's message board, a mandatory service pack for the company's antivirus VSE 8.7 software has left some machines unbootable. The update, which was issued on May 27 and later pulled on June 2, was intended to squash minor security bugs, but also inadvertently flagged some Windows system files as malware.

"McAfee removed Patch 1 for McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.7i from its download servers out of precaution after a potential issue with the update was discovered," McAfee said in a statement. "A very small number of customers reported trouble with the patch on a limited number of computers."

McAfee went on to say that it's working on identifying the cause of the false positives and, once resolved, will repost the mandatory update.

Panda Offering Free, Cloud-Based AV

Paul Lilly — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:41:58 -0500

After nearly three years of development, Panda Security today released the public beta of its Panda Cloud Antivirus, which the company claims is the first free cloud-based antivirus thin-client. By taking AV duties to the cloud and combining it with local detection technologies, Panda says it can do a better job at protecting your PC than a traditional virus scanner.

"Thanks to Panda Security's Collective Intelligence malware and goodware online database, Panda Cloud Antivirus detects more malware than traditional signature-based solutions which take longer to detect the most recent, and therefore most dangerous, variants," Pedro Bustamanta, Panda Senior Research Advisor, wrote in a blog entry.

The local portion of the program takes up roughly 50MB of hard drive space while consuming about 17MB of RAM, according to a Cnet report. By the time Panda Cloud Antivirus exits the beta stage, Bustamante hopes to have the RAM consumption down to 12MB.

One potential downside to relying on the cloud for antivirus protection is that your PC would be left vulnerable without an internet connection. But not to worry, says Bustamante, who clarified that a local cache copy of Collective Intelligence is kept on the PC for just such scenarios.

Panda Cloud Virus Download (Beta)

Image Credit: Panda Security

Performance and Reliability Fix for Windows Vista SP1

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:20:17 -0500

Stability Issues with Vista SP1? KB952709 to the Rescue!

Yesterday, Microsoft released a reliability and performance update, KB952709, for Windows Vista SP1. It takes a broom to the following problems, from the Knowledge Base article:

• This update improves the stability of Windows Vista SP1-based computers by addressing some crashes that may occur when you try to check e-mail by using a POP3 e-mail client such as Windows Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird. The crashes may occur on a Windows Vista SP1-based computer in the following scenario:

• Incoming POP3 and outgoing SMTP traffic monitoring is enabled.

• Both a third-party antivirus application and an antispyware application are installed, such as the following applications:

• ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite by Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.

• SpySweeper by Webroot Software, Inc.

• This update improves the reliability of the Windows Vista SP1 based-computers by addressing some problems that occur when you delete user accounts by using the User Accounts item in Control Panel. When this problem occurs, the system may stop responding (hang).

• This update improves the reliability of Windows Vista SP1-based computers that experience issues in which large applications cannot run after the computer is turned on for extended periods of time. For example, when you try to start Excel 2007 after the computer is turned on for extended periods of time, a user may receive an error message that resembles the following: EXCEL.EXE is not a valid Win32 application

• This update improves the reliability of Windows Vista SP1-based computers by reducing the number of crashes that may be caused by the Apple QuickTime thumbnail preview in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

• This update improves the performance of Windows Vista SP1-based computers by reducing audio and video (AV) stuttering. Such AV stuttering may occur when the audio or video component is streaming high definition content from a Windows Vista SP1-based computer that has a NVIDIA network adapter nForce driver version 67.5.4.0 that is installed to a Windows Media Center Extender device.

If any of these problems sound familiar (or you must want to head off problems in the future), you need this update.

Not Available Automatically! Here's How to Order Download!

The update offered by KB952709 isn't being offered by Windows Update, so follow the link to the article, or save time with these direct links to the 32-bit version and 64-bit version.