Kaspersky Anti Virus 2012 3 PC, 1 year license (PC)

First of all anti-virus software always slows your computer down. I don't know why people write reviews commenting out that. What is important is how much does this software slow you computer down in comparison to Norton or Symantec or whatever you are using.

I have found this program superior in all respects of performance; it does not slow you computer down as much as other anti-virus software and, in my opinion, the updates are faster and the protection better than Norton with out a bunch of stuff you don't necessarily need or want.

Pros:
- Lets my system run more smoothly (in comparison to Norton)
- Less intrusive. It just works without telling me everything it does!
- Easy to install and configure (on Windows 7)
- Good level of protection (always hard to gauge but I haven't had any problems, at all)

Keeping yourself and your computer safe is something that has become increasingly important with more and more of our lives taking place on line.

I work in the IT industry and for years have kept myself safe by ensuring that my PC and the applications I use are always as up to date with patches as possible, backed up by anti virus products available free (e.g. Microsoft Security Essentials) and by being very aware of the types of social engineering that is used to get you to open and unwittingly install scareware and malware on your PC. I have never wanted a full "internet security suite". Personally I prefer a lightweight Anti-Virus package backed up with a hardware firewall and by taking sensible precautions with my own behaviour when online. This set up also tends to have the lowest impact on system performance when gaming.

Onto this product:

This is an anti virus product only (despite what it says in the product description). It does not offer an integral firewall, or parental controls etc. This for me though was exactly what I was looking for, but obviously for some people the additional peace of mind of a full internet security suite may be more appropriate.

Installation was simple. The product detected that there was a newer version available online than was supplied on the CD and offered to install that (a 149 mb download) rather than you having to upgrade later. The whole process took less than five minutes.

Once installed the product placed a very large Widget in the Windows side-bar. Fortunately this can be closed and you can control the product from the small icon in the system tray.

I decided to run some start up and shut down performance tests comparing Kaspersky to Microsoft Security Essentials, to a clean system. For reference, my couple of year old PC runs the 64bit version of Windows 7, an E8500 dual core processor, an Nvidia GTX 460, 4 gig ram, and has a SSD Solid State boot disk. Basically it is reasonably powerful but no longer state of the art. The figures below are the average of three boots and three shut downs for each test. The start up is from pressing the power button to being able to open Google. The shut down is from pressing "shut down" to the power switching off.

No Anti Virus: Start up = 49 seconds. Shut down = 6 seconds
Microsoft Security Essentials: Start up = 50 seconds. Shut down = 7 seconds.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus: Start up = 55 seconds. Shut down = 10 seconds.

As you can see there is a small but significant impact in both the start up and shut down times. Not only that, but my PC feels very slightly less responsive all round.

Overall: I am going to give this product an initial rating of three stars and monitor performance during day to day use. If anything good or bad influences my rating over the next few months, I will add it in to this review.

It seems a trend nowadays for Antivirus makers to create two main versions of their antivirus one is: Antivirus and Internet Security. So far in all the antivirus programs I have used, the Antivirus version is a stripped down version of the Internet Security version.

So this is the case, here. Kaspersky Antivirus 2012 is a stripped-down version of Kaspersky Internet Security. It has the core functionality of Kaspersky Internet security such as:

CLOUD PROTECTION: Here the antivirus benefits from cloud protection. When your computer syncronises with the Kaspersky server in 'the cloud' it benefits from virus definitions created in response to any participating computer. In the same vein, any suspicious objects on your PC is sent to the Kaspersky server and any resultant virus definitions are sent to all participating computers. Cloud protection is in addition to the traditional protection offered by the antivirus so you get hybrid protection.

CORE VIRUS SCANNER: The usual virus scanner that allows you to scan for viruses using full or quick scan.

MAIL ANTIVIRUS: This protects your PC from infected emails, and it's really cool in that set your email client such as outlook to delete emails with particular file extensions such as .dll, .doc, .bat etc. You can enable heuristic analysis where the software uses known virus behaviour to flag an object as a virus without using virus definitions.
SYSTEM WATCHER: Allows you to reverse changes made to system files by malicious software.

MISSING:
No firewall! You have to get a third part firewall or rely on windows firewall. Kaspersky firewall is very powerful and nicely configurable. I wish they removed some other feature but retained the firewall as it is central to security.

Safe Run For Websites: You cannot browse safely as the feature is not included.

Anti-spam: It also lacks the powerful Anti-spam feature so to fight against spam look outside this antivirus.

No Parental Control: It has no monitoring/ control component like parental control found in Internet Security Versions so if you have little ones ypou may have to configure built-in parental control in Windows if you are using Vista or Windows 7.

RECOMMENDATION:
If you do online banking on your computer, I do not recommend this software unless you plug-in the holes with appropriate third party tools like a Firewall. The internet version is best if you want to be protected from online fraud.
If all you need is basic protection, then Internet security may be overkill, this one can do and is highly recommended.