iolo AntiVirus - Can This Rookie Compete?

Upon launching iola AntiVirus, the installer immediately checks for updates and downloads them. It also checks to see if other antivirus software is running on the system, apparently to avoid conflicts. In the package I received, I was not allowed to proceed with the installation until I had entered my user ID and serial number. The install was fairly standard and did require a reboot.
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iolo AntiVirus takes up about 39Mb of disk space (this includes the update that was downloaded after the installer began) and the installer writes roughly 400 registry keys to the system. The uninstaller removed all but about a megabyte from the computer and all of the registry keys.

The user interface for iola AntiVirus is relatively clear and appears professionally done. The icons are clear (iola AntiVirus has the coolest looking product icon I've seen in a while), and the layout  makes sense for the most part. It uses a single dialog box for everything and switches between "pages" to expose various aspects of the UI. The main info page is busy but readable. It offers actions along the larger, left-hand side of the screen and information boxes along the right. The information boxes can be "minimized" to reduce the amount of clutter on the screen although having them expanded isn't that muddled. The UI is rounded out by a toolbar across the top that exposes links to settings and a link to update the virus definitions.
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Because all the UI elements are on one screen, the interface could benefit both from breadcrumbs and by implementing a browser-like back button. When clicking through the various screens of the UI, I had to click the cancel button on each page. The UI does implement a "Home" button which brings the UI back to the main page which works since most functions are launched from this screen anyway. Thankfully, The UI wasn't deeply layered. Every needed element of the UI was generally available in a click or two.
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The UI is not extensive and I think this is a plus. Besides the scanning screen, the only other major UI element is the Settings screen. This element uses a tabbed metaphor which functions very nicely.
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A couple of links, like the ThreatCenter link and the virus definition encyclopedia will take you to the iolo web site. This makes for a bit of a discontinuous experience but the features that launch these web pages are marginal so the impact probably won't be too intrusive for most users. The UI also includes a taskbar icon which allows users to shut down the virus scanner completely or snooze the real-time scanner. The snooze option comes with the ability to re-enable the scanner after a set amount of time.
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The help file is a local CHM and appeared to be adequate and well laid out. There was no context-sensitive help. When help is launched, the user is brought to the home page and has to search for the content they're interested in.

The iola AntiVirusUI seemed a bit sluggish. Some refreshes were not instantaneous, status messages didn't always update as expected, and some screen changes took longer than a second (clicking the "Settings" link for example took 2-3 seconds to load the settings screen).

A couple of times, I accidentally clicked the "Perform Full System Scan" link which promptly started a scan. The scan can't be stopped until the memory and boot record have first been scanned which took around 30 seconds. This was a bit irritating. Perhaps a confirmation box (with the option to supress) would be better before a full system scan is launched. The UI is full of hotlinks which increases the chances of unintended web browsing.

The UI doesn't support hover tips. In order to discover how some of the more obscure features or settings function, a visit to the help file is necessary (what does it mean to "use artificial intelligence"?). This modest feature actually brings quite a bit of usability to any UI and iolo AntiVirus would benefit from it.

iolo Antivirus is a basic but adequate virus scanner. The tool will scan disks as well as email, support scheduled scans and realtime protection, and support automatic updates. The settings screens supports features like the ability to:

• Scan network drives (real-time and on-demand).
• Scan archive files like zip and cab files) and set a recursion level for those file types (real-time and on-demand).
• Exclude certain files and folders (real-time and on-demand).
• Scan incoming and outgoing email messages.
• Disinfect macro variants.
• Set an idle time before scanning will begin.

In my tests, the implemented features perform as expected and will not disappoint most users looking for a middle of the road virus scanner.

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When I ran iola AntiVirus for the first time, I was told that the virus definitions were 17 days old and that I needed to update. The update link was right below the warning so I clicked the link to update and in seconds, the product appeared to download and install the latest updates. However, the message did not change so I couldn't be sure if the updates actually were applied. I tried this multiple times with the same result.
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When iola AntiVirus was installed (running or not) I couldn't get ActiveSync to sync to my Windows Mobile device. I tried to fix this problem by changing settings and even shutting down the scanners. I also checked the iolo Knowledge Base for a solution but couldn't find any information to solve my problem. Uninstalling iolo AntiVirus fixed the problem. Once the product was uninstalled, ActiveSync connected as expected. I found this to be an odd bug since iola AntiVirus doesn't include a firewall.

While the feature set is expected, it isn't particularly noteworthy. For example, the product doesn't support network management of networked computers which is a feature many of the more modern scanners are supporting. There simply isn't enough here to make the product stand out amongst its very strong competitors. iolo needs an outstanding feature to convince loyal users of other products to take a serious look.

The biggest problem was with iolo's virus scanning performance. The Eicar test site supports a number of different tests including hiding a virus in a zip file, a text file, and an executable. Of those three, iola AntiVirus detected the virus in only the last of these three. The scanner allowed me to download the infected zip file (which its archive scanner would presumably be designed to prevent) as well as the infected text file. Microsoft's OneCare scanner, by contrast, detected all three.
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I ran some non-scientific tests on iola AntiVirus to evaluate whether the scanning software would cause some obvious and immediate problems with basic tasks like browsing the web and copying files. I wrote a small software program that would precisely time these operations. I ran a first set of tests without the software installed and running, and a second set with iola AntiVirus running in the background with all scanners turned on. For the first test, I copied five 21MB files over my home network from the local machine (on which iola AntiVirus would be installed) to a network share. The second test copied 300 8K files over the network. I was testing to see if smaller files, and more of them, would affect the scanners negatively. Finally, my program went to five major websites (with complex layouts) and downloaded their home pages. I ran each test five times on a 2.2Ghz Celeron, 1Gb RAM, Windows XP SP2 with all the latest service packs. Here are the results:

No Scanners.
1. Large Files: 18997 ms.
2. Small Files: 6034 ms.
3. Web sites: 6817 ms.

Scanners.
1. Large Files: 19898 ms.
2. Small Files: 12245 ms.
3. Web sites: 7057 ms.

The scanners did impact the overall performance for these basic tasks and in one case , the impact was not negligible. The largest hit came when copying lots of small files over the network, which is to be expected, and essentially doubled the time it took to copy the bits. For the work I do, this hit would be a showstopper. Users who go to their disk heavily may want to try the product for a while and do some real-world tests in their environment before making a purchase decision. The iolo runtimes around 40Mb of RAM (though this number fluctuated).