Antivirus Test: A Quest for Nearly Objective Rankings

* AV: Rising Software Infections found: 27,991 Comments: After almost giving up to make this product work, it finally installed and ran on my last attempt. This AV was one of the faster ones, chewing through all my test data in only 47 minutes. However, it only managed to identify 27,991 of the items it scanned.

* AV: Sophos Infections found: --- Comments: The software froze the computer and I was unable to run the test. I followed the same procedure I used with other AV software like reinstalling using different options, but the software still wouldn't run. It seemed like it was trying to call a service that wasn't running, but for whatever reason, the software either "failed silently" or froze the computer.

* AV: Trend Micro Infections found: 35,182 Comments: I don't know what the software meant when it said that "35,001 targets checked" when it should have counted 36,438. It also said "35,182 potential threats found" but it didn't delete them.

* AV: Trust Port Infections found: 36,171 Comments: Despite their Web claims of 99.9percent detection, this software only detected 99.26 percent on my tests. Still, it was pretty darned impressive. They use a unique approach by licensing AV engines from 4 other companies which they roll up into their own GUI (AVG, DrWeb, Norman, and Virus Blok ADA). Certainly an excellent AV choice, but still second to G Data in terms of malware identification.

* AV: Virus Blok ADA (also called VBA) Infections found: 22,417 Comments: The software has a very Spartan GUI and didn't appear to provide a summary report. In fact I'm not sure that a reporting option even exists. And since this AV identified only 61.52 percent of my malware, the lack of a reporting function doesn't really matter.