Trying Out Panda Cloud Antivirus

For almost a decade now, I’ve been a loyal AVG user. I liked how AVG was lightweight, free (for personal use), and had daily updates. It wasn’t bloatware like McAffee or Norton, and it was a decent enough antivirus software.

Through the years, though, one would notice that as software becomes more sophisticated, it becomes more bloated, too. Perhaps it’s because of the big size of the virus definitions (or the heuristics engine). Or maybe because it’s due to the popularity of low-powered netbooks.

Thus, as I reformatted and reinstalled Windows 7 on my old-school Asus EeePC (the 8.9-inch 900), I tried to look for alternatives to AVG. I read that Microsoft’s own Security Essentials, which comes free with any genuine installation (however you may define that). Then another good option was Panda’s Cloud Antivirus.

Panda calls it collective security. And because all (or most?) of the processes occur in the cloud — either on Panda’s servers, or shared across the network of users — it also has a smaller resource footprint.

Wanting to try this out, I’ve uninstalled AVG on all of my Windows computers, including netbooks and laptops, just to see how it fares. At this point, I’m mostly online, and most of the computers I use are always online, save for the netbook, which I take almost everywhere I go (which means there may not necessarily be a wireless connection).

As I see it, a cloud-based antivirus program has a few pros and cons.

Pros:

• Light resource use: Panda Cloud Antivirus uses about 15MB of system memory during idle state, and about 60MB during active scanning. Also, being on the cloud, scanning essentially happens offsite, so your computer doesn’t have to contribute precious processing cycles just to see if your files have some badwar.e
• It’s on the cloud, so you don’t need to download virus definitions frequently.

However, there are a few cons to a cloud-based setup like this. I can think of a few.

• What if you’re not connected? Granted, viruses usually come in emails and links. However, what if someone plugs in a USB flash drive onto your computer, and it’s offline? Panda does have basic on-site scanning, but you might need to be connected to be assured newer virus will get caught.
• Is this an intrusion of your privacy? You’re essentially sending bits and pieces of the files you access while Panda is active. To the security-conscious, this might constitute a breach of privacy.