Review: Total Security 2008

When we think about antivirus or security softwares, products developed by Norton, McAfee and AVG come to our mind. Why not you think of Total Security by India based Quick Heal Technologies (P) Limited?

Anand put to test Total Security 2008 in his own test PC and install his observations in this review. The product not only detects and cleans viruses but also protects your system from Spywares, Rootkits and SPAM. It also includes an integrated firewall.

Getting Started

The setup process took around five minutes to complete and it went off smoothly. I need not have to reboot the system after finishing the installation. I initially performed a scan of my root drive and to my surprise the product detected lot of threats and some Trojans as well which my previous virus cleaner failed to detect. Moreover, I also found that the scan speed is incredibly faster and the process was completed within 20 minutes in a system with 512 MB RAM.

The initial startup screen provides the status of each service. Clicking a menu item from the left side will take you to the relevant setup. I found that the product provides flexible options for scanning. You can select what you want to scan. The system tends to become slow during the scanning process which is normal with all security softwares. Total Security 2008 is updated daily and they are automatically installed without any manual intervention.

My Impressions

The vendor has bundled several useful utilities such as Rootkit scanner along with the product. I did not find any separate option to scan for the existence of spywares but I feel that it has been integrated with virus scanner. The e-mail scanner bundled with the suite doesn’t print status messages at the end of each e-mail like AVG and hence there is no way to know whether the e-mails were scanned or not.

I found that the initial startup screen opens up and stays for over one minute even if I manually select a file/folder for scanning. I feel this is unnecessary and the product should directly perform the required scan.

The product includes a comprehensive documentation with a detailed coverage of all the features bundled into it. However, it is accessible only from the main screen. I would suggest the vendor to provide an option to open the help file directly from the Start menu.

Total Security 2008 suite generates separate reports for each activity as and when they occur, even for daily updates. You can configure and customize advanced functionalities by selecting the Options link from the main screen.

Final Views

I noticed that my system becomes slower during booting and live update stages. I think it’s because my test PC has only 512 MB of RAM. I still feel that Total Security 2008 requires at least 1 GB of RAM to work properly.

From my point of view, Total Security 2008 is light weight, very easy to use and is an excellent piece of software which does the job of keeping the viruses and trojans away from your valuable data.

Pros – Fast Scanner, Excellent detection, Report Generation

Cons – Slows down the system, requires more RAM

Ease of Use – 5 | Performance – 5 | Value for Money – 5

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