14 DAY TRIAL // Keeping viruses away can be a really tricky thing to do, because you have to be careful with the food you eat, wash your hands as often as possible, avoid crowded places and so on, but I am sure that Michael Jackson can tell you more about these things, since I am going to talk about computer viruses and other threats that can make your computer feel bad. I don't know about you, but when my computer has problems, I feel bad too, so let's get to the point: today's cure for computer viruses, spyware and all the other evil threats that you hear about at least weekely.
Today's guard for our computers is called VirusKeeper 2006 Pro and its latest version is 6.5, released almost two months ago. Unfortunately, you can't have VirusKeeper's protection for free, and during the 30 days trial period you won't be able to update the program and its threats database. The price required for registering is 39.95$, an average price for this kind of program, although I've seen enough cheaper alternatives...
After completing the fast and easy install process required by the 4.2MB setup package, you will find yourselves facing a really nice interface, but that's not something unusual when we're talking about antiviruses/antispyware tools. Looking at this program's interface made me think that it would sound normal to find that it's also skinnable, but unfortunately it's not. Anyway, you don't have to worry, because your eyes will thank you each time they'll have the chance to enjoy the modern and stylish blue interface of VirusKeeper, but what's interesting here are the features hidden behind the tabs nicely placed inside the console window, and this is what we're going to talk about next.
First of all, there's the Analyze area that grants you access to the three scanning tools available - Instant analyzis (no, I am not reinventing the English language, but VirusKeeper does!), Anti-virus file scan and Anti-spyware scans. The number of threats recognized is pretty low, around 33,000, and I was really surprised to see that this is probably the first antispyware tool that doesn't warn me about any of the cookies and registry keys from my computer.
Anyway, this program is really easy to use, and as long as its active protection features work as they should, the number of threats recognized shouldn't matter. The reason I am saying this is that most viruses today have the same ways to attack and infiltrate, and if those ways are blocked, it doesn't matter the color of the threat.
The real time protections available in this program can take care of your system files and folders, Windows Registry, scan active processes, monitor I/O ports, perform real time spyware detection, protect your Internet Explorer and automatically scan new and suspicious files.
The ProcessWatch II is a tool that analyzes programs running in your system's memory, detects dangerous items and displays information about them. This module allows you to browse active processes and services, loaded drivers, startup items and browser objects loaded(BHOs).
The Alerts Log, Quarantine, Ignore List, Update and Help areas are not interesting at all, and the only reason is that they are used when it's the case, but my luck was to be free of any alerts, quarantined items and I had no need to add items to the Ignore List, and I hope it's going to be the same for you. After all, an antivirus is the same as a guard dog - excellent to have, better not to have anything to attack/remove...
The Good
VirusKeeper 2006 Pro is very easy to use, has an excellent interface and its features can prove really useful for protecting beginners and advanced users from threats.
The Bad
I would better like to have a 7 days trial version that can be updated than this 30 days trial that can't, because sometimes, an update can be the difference between "clean" and "infected"...
The Truth
VirusKeeper is a program worth keeping, but only if they would let trial users update the threats database... The way things are at this time, you can use this as an additional guard for your computer, but not alone!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
