Review: ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS 6

ParetoLo

click to enlarge

The menu buttons make navigation easy and even the most inexperienced of users will have no difficulty working out how to access the program's various options and features.

In short, ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS is lean, clean and easy to use.

Installation was a quick, easy and entirely painless process.

ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS certainly packs in plenty of features in addition to basic virus blocking and removal.

One of the more interesting features is what ParetoLogic refers to as cyclic detection. ParetoLogic explain this as follows, "Malware is blocked automatically depending on your Protection level or when you chose to block it after a popup alert appears. In certain instances the detected item is blocked but, due to its malicious design, it is still able to write a new entry to the registry causing another popup alert to be displayed. This pattern will repeat until a Cyclic Detection alert appears. Cyclic Detection is unique to ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS. With Cyclic Detection the Block option is disabled in order to stop the detection re-occurrence. The Cyclic Detection alert warns you that your system may be infected with malware and you should run a scan to remove it."

click to enlarge

The scheduling

click to enlarge

ParetoLogic goes an extra mile b

click to enlarge

The Active Protection screen allows you to configure many settings of the program. For example, you could set three levels of protection. You can also enable monitoring of Windows startup programs and set the monitor level to medium or high. If there is a particular website you want block access

click to enlarge

ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS has great detection and removal capabilities. The product has been certified by West Coast Labs and was able to block everything I threw at it during testing. Impressive!

ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS ships with an extensive Help File and other support options are available via ParetoLogic's website.

The program's minimum system requirements are as follows:

Hardware requirement:

• Intel Pentium 3 or compatible CPU.
• At least 256 MB of memory (RAM).
• 100 MB of hard disk space.
• Internet Connection (required for registering the product key).
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher version.

Operating system requirement:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4.
• Microsoft Windows XP SP2.
• Microsoft Windows Vista.

At $49.95 for a single computer license, ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS is rather expensive. By way of comparison, ESET NOD32 Antivirus costs $39.99 and BitDefender antivirus $24.95. At the time of writing, ParetoLogic were offering the product at a special discount rate of $39.95 but, even at that, the pricing is still on the steep side.

I'd like to see ParetoLogic adjust their pricing. The product is well designed and undoubtedly a great virus stopper, but it's steep pricing makes it difficult to recommend. To put it simply, there are less expensive products on the market which are just as effective as ParetoLogic Anti-Virus PLUS.