The retail market leaders, Symantecs Norton AntiVirus (and its sister products), and McAfees VirusScan are universally available at our local retail stores, often with significant rebates that make them very inexpensive, and sometimes free after rebates. While these are both excellent products, and have earned their respective dominant market shares, there are also some other outstanding, and possibly superior, antivirus products on the shelves or available online.

Recently showing up in most of the local electronics and other stores commonly selling antivirus products is the Computer Associates EZ-Armor series. These are excellent products, as corroborated by many published reviews and ratings, which are often available as a less expensive alternative to the market leaders. Published by one of the largest software companies, EZ-Armor is a fairly new competitor in the home and small office market, but is not new to the industry. According to claims published on the Computer Associates (CA.com) website, the institutional version of EZ-Armor, sold under a variety of names, is the most widely used antivirus product in the Fortune 500 companies. Typically available locally for about $30 for the software and one year of support and upgrades (now almost universal from almost all antivirus companies), there is also a version available for free download as a promotional partnership between CA and Microsoft at www.my-etrust.com/microsoft. This free download includes a year of service and updates, as well as an excellent firewall (the free version of ZoneAlarm), and a pop-up blocker. The most popular firewall in use Zone Alarm, recently released a similar product under its name that has the highly rated Zone Alarm Pro firewall integrated with the CA antivirus program.

There are many other excellent antivirus products available which are not generally obtainable at retail in our local market. Eset software publishes a product NOD32, which has the distinction of being honored with more 100% In the Wild Virus Detection awards from a leading independent testing facility than any other antivirus product, recently receiving its 28th consecutive bi-monthly award. NOD32 is an ISO 9001 certified product, which denotes its quality and service, and is also certified as effective by the ICSA Labs (www.icsalabs.com). NOD32 is noteworthy not just for its detection ability, but for the minimal resources or footprint utilized while running on a system, freeing up more resources than most of its larger competitors. In a variety of tests performed by some of the leading computer magazines, it was among the fastest to update its virus signature files, fastest scan engine to search drives for extant viruses, and among the best heuristics in the industry to detect new viruses before signatures can be updated. Available as a free trial download, or $39 to purchase, NOD32 can be found at www.nod32.com.

Panda Antivirus, www.pandasoftware.com, is another excellent choice. I first saw Panda in a local office supply store, which unfortunately does not carry it anymore, but that loss of one retailer has not hurt Pandas sales, which have been increasing market share both in the U.S. and internationally. Published in Spain, Panda also has a reputation for fast updates, faster scanning than its larger competitors, and excellent detection and disinfection capabilities. Available in a variety of versions for different environments, Panda offers its very competent and capable Titanium series for home users who want reliable antivirus protection without having to play with settings and updates, as it frequently and automatically downloads tiny incremental updates keeping it up to date without any intervention from the user. Pandas premium product is Panda Platinum, a more comprehensive antivirus product for those who want more bells and whistles, and is seamlessly bundled with the Sybase firewall to help protect computers from intruders

There are several other excellent antivirus programs available that have a proven track record of reliability and service. A top-rated Russian publisher, Kaspersky, publishes a variety of antivirus products ranging from a basic home edition to advanced corporate security editions. Available for download as free trial versions or for purchase at www.kaspersky.com, these products are often top-rated by many of the European computer magazines, and have recently caught the positive attention of some of the American media as well, especially due to its hourly updates. Kaspersky antivirus was recently selected by IOLO Technologies to be bundled with is new System Mechanic Pro 5, a direct competitor of Norton Utilities, by combining a series of comprehensive computer utilities with antivirus and firewall protection (www.iolo.com).

For those who can not afford antivirus software, several decent products are still available for personal use at no charge. In addition to the free EZ-Armor suite mentioned above, there are other free products available, but they typically lack the tech support and features of their commercial competitors. Avast and AVG are the two most popular free (for personal use) antivirus programs, and are available for download at www.avast.com, and www.grisoft.com (AVG). If I wanted a free antivirus program, I would choose the EZ-Armor suite.

There is absolutely no reason NOT to have current and updated antivirus software installed, and updated hourly, or at least daily.

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