CA Anti-Virus 2009 Reviews

Pros: High stability, improved interface, increased starting and scanning speed.

Cons: Help features and support are not good. It does not include anti-phishing, anti-rootkit and basic IM protection.

The Bottom Line: As one of the most popular PC utility in the world, CA’s brand always predicates comprehensive and stable PC protection. As many other anti-virus apps do, CA Anti-Virus 2008 does hog system resources, however, compared with the previous version, it has been improved much.

Benefits:
Today, just in a second, there may naissance thousands of computer viruses, even existent ones evolve ceaselessly. As far as I’m concerned, most of my personal information and important data are saved in my desktop, so a comprehensive PC security solution is necessarily provided with. I have experienced several anti-virus programs, such as Kaspersky, Norton, Avg, and some others. They’re all good at their work, but none of them makes me feel satisfied – either hogs much RAM or hard to operate. Since I kept my computer protected by CA Anti-Virus 2008 & NOD 32, I have not tried other anti-virus programs. 

CA Anti-Virus 2008 provides comprehensive protection against viruses, worms and Trojan horse programs, including E-mail Scanning, Scheduled and On-Demand Scanning, Real-time Scanning and Advanced Heuristic Scanning. A virus could hardly hide itself from such strong scanning functions. While there are also some important features CA Anti-Virus 2008 doesn’t have, such as anti-phishing, anti-rootkit and basic IM protection, which NOD32 provides and use nearly no RAM. So, that’s why I choose these two programs to protect my privacy together – a main force and an assistant. 

CA Anti-Virus 2008’s E-mail Scanning works automatically, which protects against viruses that arriving via email, before they can cause damage. The Real-time Scanning proactively stops viruses by scanning files when they are opened, closed or saved to your PC – many viruses spread through this way. You could also set a schedule to scan your PC when you don’t use it, which is convenient, since the scanning takes much RAM; it may affect other programs normally working. Heuristic Scanning is a most important feature, because that there are many viruses vary ceaselessly; a powerful anti-virus utility should contain the function of heuristic scanning, unless there would be many escape unpunished viruses attacking our computers. By the way, Kaspersky’s heuristic function is the most powerful.

Set up:
Before you finish installation, you have to get through some bored steps for registration. There is a third party program, Yahoo toolbar, lurking in the installer package, which maybe annoy users.
To uninstall this program is a challenge, you will need to use some Add/Remove software to help you or remove it through Control Panel.

Interface:
CA’s interface offers simplicity and superior ease-of-use, helping you quickly and easily set preferences, check program status, and maintain a secure PC. It uses an Explorer-like file tree that you use to select individual files and folders for scanning.

System Requirements:
CA Anti-Virus 2008 is compatible with Windows operation system except Windows XP 64, Windows Vista 64, Windows 98/ME. The hardware requirements are: 256 MB RAM (512 MB for Windows Vista); 300 MHz or higher processor (800 MHz for Windows Vista); Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher (7.0 for Windows Vista); 35 MB hard disk space.

Conclusion:
Anti-Virus by CA is an inexpensive option for protecting your computer. Its powerful functions deserve recommending.