CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime - Like Buying a Cheap Parachute

CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime - Like Buying a Cheap Parachute
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Introduction

Certain things are not worth skimping on, such as bullet-proof vests and parachutes. You may want to add antivirus software to that list.

CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition bills itself as a cheap alternative to commercial antivirus offerings. It lists at $60 for a five-year license, while vendors such as McAfee charge $40 per year.

Price to Value (4 out of 5)

What’s Hot:
CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition is cheap and it’s nice to be able to buy the product once and not have to renew for five years.

What’s Not:
Price alone is a very poor consideration when looking at an antivirus product. Yes, CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition is cheap, but there are cheaper, better solutions available.

Installation & Setup (1 out of 5)

What’s Hot:

CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition is a standard Windows installation.
[See Images 1 - 3]

The Kerio Personal Firewall is bundled with CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition.
[See Image 4]

What’s Not:

I started the install on a Friday, but due to technical difficulties, I was not able to complete it until Tuesday.

As part of the installation process, CyberScrub AntiVirus does real-time serial number verification. This requires an Internet connection at the time of installation. In my case, the serial number was valid, but the install failed, for reasons unknown. At that point, a dialog box appeared. A quick look at the dialog box revealed numerous spelling and grammatical errors. If the vendor couldn’t even write a correct dialog box, I was not sure they could write an install routine that worked. [See Image 5]

All a program should require is a valid serial number. Aborting an install because the program can’t connect to the license server is excessive, especially for a bargain-priced program such as CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition. This approach should give you pause if you’re considering buying it.

Three technical support tickets and four days later, I was able to get the install to work.

My joy was short-lived when I got a kernel loading failed message. I submitted a technical support ticket and found that this was a common problem.
[See Images 6 and 7]

Tech support’s solution was to go into Control Panel and change the boot.ini file. That is a lot to ask for in a program installation and something I have never seen.

Conclusion: Four days, three tech support tickets, one tech support problem, and a major configuration change, and only then the program was installed and working.

User Interface (2 out of 5)

What’s Not:
I found CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition to be completely nonintuitive. A user has no real idea what is going on when bringing up the application.
[See Image 8]

Of the eight available items to be clicked, only Help and Go were intuitive. The others were unclear.

Product Features (4 out of 5)

What’s Hot:

CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition is one of many security products available from CyberScrub LLC. But the reality is that CyberScrub AntiVirus is an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus.

One problem is CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition uses an older version of the Kaspersky engine. Kaspersky allowed CyberScrub LLC to market the product as a five-year solution for $60.

Knowing that, one is hard placed to find a compelling reason not to go directly to Kaspersky or other top-tier antivirus vendors.

CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition does one thing and one thing only; scan for viruses.

What’s Not:
CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition doesn’t work on 64-bit machines, most notably Vista.

Help & Support (4 out of 5)

What’s Hot:

CyberScrub AntiVirus’s help functionality provides a bare minimum of information. [See image 9] 

The support website does have a lot of valuable information and its support ticketing system provides excellent ticket submittal and status. An email response is sent to confirm a ticket was submitted and received.
[See Image 10]

During my frustrating attempt to install CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition, and while I waited for a response from tech support, I decided to pick up the phone and called the company. Even though no phone support is provided (nor is there any option for it even at a cost), I was able to speak to someone who was sincere in his attempt to figure out why I was having the problem. He did his best to find someone who could assist me.

What’s Not:
No phone support is offered for CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition.

Security & Privacy (4 out of 5)

What’s Hot:
CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition does perform decent scans for viruses and spyware.

Performance (3 out of 5)

What’s Not:
CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition is slow, really slow. It took over an hour to do a basic virus scan on my laptop.

Also, there is no way to determine the status of the scan without stopping the scan.

Images

Initial install menu

Installation configuration

Installation configuration

Kerio firewall option

Install failure

Kernel failure message

Tech support ticket

Main interface screen

Help menu

Tech support ticket

Suggested Features

Complete product redesign.

Wean off dependence on Kaspersky. 

Fix install program so it doesn’t require a live internet connection to run.

Conclusion

CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition is an average product in a crowded field of superior products, which includes many programs with superb functionality.

I would be reluctant to recommend CyberScrub AntiVirus Lifetime Edition given the many other products that have superior functionality.

McAfee, Kaspersky, Symantec