Walk Through Review

Installation – 8

Installation is easy and straight forward following the Installation Wizard.  You can go the simple default install or the advanced method, which we will use because we’re geeks!

There are some details to look at for a custom installation.

During Custom Setup choose to make certain features to not be installed.  All are selected to be installed by default so you can make any appropriate changes.

Next, I came across a screen telling me Spybot Search & Destroy is not compatible.  This was a bit annoying, McAfee and other Anti-Virus applications get along fine with Spybot.  You can hit the Remove button which will open up Programs and Features in Control Panel to uninstall it manually, or just click Next and Kasperskey will uninstall it automatically.

After any incompatible programs have been uninstalled the first phase of the installation is complete.

Next we need to activate Kaspersky online, either the commercial license you purchased or the trial if testing it out first.

Now to choose the type of protection to use and once again there is the choice of automatic or advanced mode.  For the sake of convenience you might want to choose Automatic Mode because we can make changes to any advanced mode after installation is complete.

After configuration is complete a restart is required.

Features – 8

Kaspersky has many basic and advanced protection features accessible through the Control Center.   Anything you would need to configure is right there clearly labeled and laid out.

Real-Time Anti-Malware protection runs in the background waiting to capture malicious applications when they arise.

Another feature is Online Security which protects against network and / or Internet attacks.  Here you can also scan Internet Explorer’s configuration.  It will scan the browser’s current settings to determine if certain sites could exploit a vulnerability.

When starting the IE Diagnostic wizard you are reminded to close out of IE first.  After running the test, a list is displayed with potential threats.  You can select and unselect different ones and allow Kaspersky to fix them.  There are three categories, Strong, recommended, and Additional actions.

Another cool feature is the Security Analyzer Wizard which will search for application vulnerabilities along with other OS utilities that may not be functioning properly.  Like IE diagnostics, you will be able to make any corrections to the result list.

There are two types of Virus scans, Full and Quick, although each one is customizable making it completely customizable.  Scans are very quick and did not bog down the system much at all.

Ease of Use – 7

After installation it was very easy to dig in and start using the application.  The User Interface is very intuitive and easy to use for varying tasks.  You can either schedule daily, weekly, or monthly updates or simply do them manually from the control center.  Again the graphical interface give you a nice view of the update process.

Scheduling updates is very simple.

Changing settings is very easy as well.  There are no annoying warnings that pop up when you do make changes like in other programs.

To scan a single file just right click and choose Scan for Viruses from the context menu.

Performance – 8

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 is surprisingly fast and accurate while not bogging down system resources.

Product Support – 8

There is great support for Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 through their website including live chat, email support tickets, FAQ’s, and downloadable user manuals.

Conclusion

For our tests we ran Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 on the Windows 7 (64-bit) Beta as it officially supports it according to Microsoft.  Everything ran very smooth and I did not receive any type of errors.  Kaspersky utilizes three security protections against threats such as viruses, Trojans, Worms, spyware and adware.  Also, real-time scanning of email, Internet traffic, and IM clients.  If you experience an update and a false positive is detected making a program not work, there is an option to roll back the database.  All things considered Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 might be a great choice for your PC’s security.

Rating

• Installation: 8
• Ease of Use: 7
• Features: 8
• Performance: 8
• Product Support: 8