Panda Antivirus Titanium - Panda Software Review

Overall Rating

Can fool naive buyers into forking out cash. Good for PANDA.

VERY SLOW SCANNER, EMAIL SCANNER FAULTY, NO TECH SUPPORT, SOME GAMES DON'T RUN, HEURISTIC SCANNER DESTROYS LEGITIMATE PROGRAMS

Forget the reviews and take notice of users who have bought this terrible program. I bought it and have had nothing but problems. I have bought Norton 2003 as well as PC-Cillin & PC-Cillin is the BEST by a long shot!

Took FIFTEEN MINUTES to scan a game! Email scanner only works sometimes so you will be sure to get WORMS in your inbox. Heuristic scan destroyed Pest Patrol requiring a reinstall. Both Norton & PC-Cillin scanned the same game in seconds!! ULTRA-FAST SCANNER ???? Hype more like it!!

Their so called 24/7 tech support is a gimmick - sent 10 emails but no replies so far since yesterday. Update window has to be closed manually EVERYTIME you update. Option to turn it off but then you have no way of knowing if it is updating. They could have made it a 5 second pop up like in Norton.

Cannot run some games with this antivirus. Also no way of verifying that a file has been scanned as with a right click in PC-Cillin. No email notification that an email is virus free. No notification that emails are being scanned. PC-Cillin is best so far compared to this trash and Norton. NO SUPPORT for this product when things go wrong. Claim of 24/7 tech support is simply not true. Don't buy it because it will allow worms into your email, delete legitimate programs and stop many games from running with NO TECH SUPPORT which is just a gimmick to get you to buy. Once they got your money they disappear like Norton so BE WARNED. I read all the reviews but found most of them must be affiliates because none of their claims are true.


DON'T BUY PANDA!!

Members' Comments onworldcitizen.'s Review

• Charlie1 on 28th Jan 2004

  This review is so full of it, I don't know where to start.
  
  I am an Admin with a few years of experience of using both Norton and McAfee. Panda was suggested to me at time of renewal and I was a total sceptic. I thought better the devil you know and all that, not wanting to start the learning process again.
  
  However, after two years of service, not a single infection has taken place, the number of weird conflicts (that seem to cure themselves once the AV program is disabled) have reduced to virtually none and I would say that the only time I spend managing it is because I can't believe it's gone so long since I did anything without the need for my intervention.
  
  This is in an environment of 55 users and also many friends and family who now use it at home. I install and run many more programs, including games, then the average user, both at home and at work and have never had a problem that has been caused by Panda.
  
  I can't recommend them enough and can only assume this unhappy reviewer either had hardware problems or didn't install Panda from a clean system. Mind you, I've uninstalled Norton and installed Panda many times without a hitch.

• Antony1 on 11th Feb 2004

  I have to agree completely with Charlie1 on this review. I've used Panda for a year without any problems whatsoever. It's quick, quiet in the background, updates automatically, doesn't slow my system down, doesn't prevent any games from playing, and does what it's supposed to. Only one minor virus in twelve months and Panda knocked it on the head straight away.
  
  I've only needed support for an admin problem and all it took was one e-mail, auto acknowledged immediately, and the problem was sorted with a helpful reply well within 24 hours.
  
  A year down the line and licence renewal time came around. For the sake of interest, I tried a trial of PC Cillin and was horrified at how long it took to scan my almost-full 80Gb hard drive - a tortoise-like 75 minutes and mine is a fast system!
  
  PC Cillin is not only slow, but takes up all my processor power when it's doing a full system scan, so I can't do anything else demanding when it's running.
  
  Now I can see why my computer supplier stopped supplying PC Cillin and Norton with their systems and went over to Panda instead!
  
  After the trial of PC Cillin, I'm renewing my Panda licence!

• JanC on 3rd Apr 2004

  I fully agree with worldcitizen.
  
  The email scanner is VERY SLOW. Today it took me over 30 minutes to pick up 85 emails. I get over 400 emails a day. I'm still trying to sort it out but will have to give up on it.
  
  There is NO tech support... NONE. I have sent them 4 or 5 emails with no response, filled in forms on their website with no response.
  
  If it 'neutralizes' a virus the popup window does not go away so your email scan hangs until you close it. This causes your program to timeout leaving your Outlook personal folder corrupted leading to a reboot. (Windows 2000) I have uninstalled it and reinstalled it twice.
  
  I've been fighting with this software since January, I'm tired of fighting.
  
  I would not recommend this product to anyone.
  
  Jan

• Worldcitizen on 6th Apr 2004

  I was only being honest and telling the truth about what happened to me. If telling the truth loses one respect then that is very regrettable.
  
  The 2 main problems I had were the scanner took 15 minutes to scan the game Black & White so I had to stop scanning and when I had heurisitc scanning on which I wanted to be on, the program deleted ppmemcheck & ppcontrol center which meant I had to re-install Pest Patrol time and again. Also I wanted email infections to be deleted before they got in my inbox but this option was not available.
  
  I had problems scanning large games and with Pest Patrol being deleted. As well I didn't like the idea of having worms sitting in my inbox. I wanted them deleted before they got on my pc.
  
  When I emailed my concerns to Panda they referred me to another branch and I had difficulty getting a real live person to respond to my email. It took about 3 days before someone real got back to me. They advertise 24/7 so I was not happy about that at all.
  
  I'm very sorry that for just relating my real life experiences I get virtually accused of Panda bashing which was not the intention but I was clearly frustrated with the problems and with their tech support and it showed in my review. If a product is so frustrating someone then that does point to some deficiencies either with the program itself or the delay in getting support to the person. If they got back to me in a day or so and helped I would have been much happier but it was at least 3 days before I could find a real live person & Panda were making a big thing of 24/7 tech support in their sales pitches which was 1 of the reasons I bought the program.
  
  I felt Panda needed to make a few improvements before I would consider it so I recommended to people not to use it from personal experience. People who have had good experiences will recommend otherwise but there are problems on some set-ups with Panda and mine was 1 of them.
  
  I just wasn't happy with it's overall performance from the scanner to the email interception and tech support. I apologise if I have offended Panda supporters but this was my personal experience with the Panda product.

• nolazabal on 12th May 2004

  This is true about panda, the email scanner is extremely slow makes working with outlook almost impossible. Again I have emailed Tech Support and got not even an acknowledgement of receiving the email. The Antivirus itself is very good but man this outlook scan is the worst.