Panda Free & Pro Antivirus/Internet Security Discussion

Download Panda Antivirus v18 Free Antivirus

Panda Free Antivirus features:

• Cloud-based disinfection engine.
• Behavioral analysis engine in the free edition.
• Improved offline protection.
• Process monitor allows seeing Internet connections on a per process basis.
• Improved performance and 50% faster scans.
• New advanced configuration options such as asking for confirmation before neutralizing.
• Compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit).
• New interface.
• Ability to manage different licenses.

What's new in this version:

• New UI completely redesigned.
• Improved subscription and device management integrated in the product. Users can manage their subscriptions and their anti-theft protection (My Devices area) from their products.
• Fully compatible with the new Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
• Engine improvements for better protection and performance.
• Other improvements requested by Panda Community.

Note: The setup tries to install Panda Safe Web, and set Yahoo as default home page and default search, unselect if not needed.

 

I briefly tested this AV - namely Panda Antivirus Pro and while it has by far the smallest RAM footprint of any AV I have tested it also has two issues. One is that the interface does not scale up properly, so it's tiny on FHD screen and must be unusable on 4K screen.

Second is rather ridiculous. The AV Pro contains a firewall but I found no way to disable automatic rule creation in it. So it seems that anything Panda deems trustworthy will get automatically created rule that allows it to connect to the internet. You can later edit it to forbid it, but that's the only way to do it. There seems to be no way to have the firewall ask you when the application attempts to connect.
I looked for it but nothing seemed to work and documentation in scarce.

 

thanks for your time, testing, and mini review. Not trying this in the near future then. I want to be in full control although yes, it is one of the lighter AVs out there.

don't try their customer service, you will not be happy

 

Is this Antivirus good to use for Mac?

 

Yes: Panda Antivirus for Mac

 

Panda Free Antivirus v18.1.0 Released

Download:
http://www.pandasecurity.com/usa/homeusers/solutions/free-antivirus/

Note: The setup tries to install Panda Safe Web, and set Yahoo as default home page and default search, Make sure you unselect them.

 

I'm testing the free version and oddly I'm more impressed with it than I was with the Pro version.
for one thing it does not have the useless firewall, co I used Comodo Firewall in its place which offers proper control over applications, and for another, the interface scales properly on high res screens, so you can actually use it.

I'm not sure if that's the right business model for them though.

 

so do you recommend this? how is it on performance? heavy or light? does it cause any weird issues reported in event viewer log?

 

@Phoenix I will have to reserve my judgment until I have tested it fully but so far, so good.
No issues, good performance, light on resources - I'm not sure about the scanning speed yet because I made some modifications in settings so I might have slowed it down.

 

I don't care for scanning speed as I never scan manually anyway. When a virus is intercepted, it will detect it, that's all I care about.

I will buy the Pro version as I don't like anything which says Free (to avoid ads/nags)

 

Just installed the trial of the Pro version.

I like how in the interface, when trying to add exclusions, you can select multiple folders together rather than do it one by one

It also has a Firewall which is strange considering I installed the AV only

 

It doesn't nag about anything - there is a "Panda news" section in the settings menu.

 

thank you for saving me 60 USD then

 

What's the difference between Panda Cloud Free and Panda Cloud PRO?

 

@downloads

and here is what I mean do you get constant event log errors...... this one pertains to Panda and If you Google this, you will find users complaining about this since 2013....

 

@Phoenix I don't have this one although I have lots of pav3wsc.exe errors which are kinda my own fault as this process apparently registers Panda with Windows Security Center , which I have disabled

 

I had to ditch Panda for one reason - when downloading a file it produced a high CPU usage although not by any of Panda processes but by System.exe.
I suspect it's Panda's low level driver that tried to scan the file on the fly that is the culprit but I couldn't establish that for certain. The issue was present with Panda free and a trial of Paid version and not in any other case, so it's Panda alright.

A pity because I really liked it.

 

my friend couldn't even uninstall it properly, he had to use the Panda uninstall tool.