Electronics & Computers Deals here!
Entered CNET Catalog: 10/12/2007
SKU: AVP08LNC03E
Manufacturer: CA
Manufacturer description
CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 provides comprehensive protection against viruses, worms and Trojan horse programs that can destroy the information you value most: photos, music, documents, and more. It also protects against a wide range of spyware threats that can expose your confidential information and diminish your PC's performance.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 10/12/2007
Editors' note: On March 5, 2008, CNET revised its antispyware review ratings to emphasize a product's ability to remove spyware. The new ratings are based on the following formula: Installation (20 percent), Features (20 percent), Performance (50 percent), and Support (10 percent). In most cases a product's rating went down, expanding the range between highest and lowest rated.
CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 holds the middle ground, neither improving nor declining with this year's offering. The code is leaner, resulting in faster scans; however, there are too few features here to warrant much excitement. Also, this is the only antivirus product we tested that attempted to download a third-party toolbar during installation. And we are puzzled why a major security company like CA doesn't provide more technical support for its consumer products. If you're looking for economy, choose BitDefender Antivirus 2008. If you're looking the best antivirus product for 2008, we recommend Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2008, our Editors' Choice.
Setup
CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 includes three PC licenses at $49.95. By comparison, BitDefender Antivirus offers its three-user license for $29.95. Kaspersky offers its single license at $49.95, and charges $59.95 for its three-user license. CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 runs on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, while Norton AntiVirus 2008 only works on XP and Vista.
There is a very good reason not to blow through the installation of CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 without reading each screen carefully. One thing we always hate to find is the Yahoo toolbar hiding within any installation, and it's lurking here. By all means, uncheck the box asking you to install it along with CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008. Worse, Yahoo also asks permission to make it your search engine by default. We prefer the freedom to choose our own search engines, thank you. CA is the only antivirus vendor we reviewed that included third-party piggyback applications within its install.
Also, we were unable to continue with our CA installation without registering. Other antivirus vendors allow you to skip registration or, in the case with Symantec, click Next three times to continue. Not with CA. Although the information collected is negligible, given the Yahoo toolbar lurking in the installer package, we didn't like handing over any additional information.
Should you want to remove CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008, there is no All Programs option to uninstall. You will need to use Windows Add/Remove Software. In doing so, a CA uninstall wizard will then ask if you want to remove the antivirus, the antispyware, or both from your machine. After reboot, we found no traces of CA products on our machine.
However, if you installed the Yahoo toolbar or made it your default search engine, you'll need to remove these separately. Removing CA alone will not change the status of these Yahoo applications.
Interface
CA uses a consistent interface for all its offerings. While we like this, we don't like the confusing up-sell that goes along with this implementation. For example, after finding out that you don't have a firewall, instead of offering to turn on the free Windows Firewall, CA takes you to a Web page that talks about why you should upgrade and install the CA Firewall. The page is dry, no graphics, no sales pitch, but might cause people to think that it's an FAQ page. It's not.
Features
With CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008, that's what you get; no firewall, no antiphishing tools, no extras.
Within the antivirus protection, the scans are faster than last year. The features touted in marketing materials--real-time scanning, advanced heuristic scanning, and automatic e-mail scanning--are standard and do not stand out from the competition.
Same with the antispyware protection. CA, which bought PestPatrol many years ago, now includes more information about the specific spyware found on your machine rather than requiring you to click to a Web site for more information. Again, none of the features--real-time protection, automatic updates, and custom scans--are standard and do not stand out from the competition.
Performance
CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 stays in the middle of the pack, sometimes trending toward the lower, faster end of the middle in our test results. On our iTunes test, CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 took the longest, at 273 seconds to complete. In our Microsoft Office test, CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 completed the fastest, at 1,191 seconds. In a test scanning a single folder with compressed and media files, CA scored 187 seconds, again, toward the faster end of our middle group. And in terms of boot speed, CA was in the middle at 36 seconds. To find out how we test antivirus software, see CNET Labs' How we test: Antivirus software page.
In terms of whether or not CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 will protect your PC, CNET uses results from two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 was not included in the latest test results from AV-Comparatives.org, for on-demand scans and retrospective/proactive tests. CA Anti-Virus Plus CA Anti-Spyware 2008 was included in the latest test results from CheckVir.com and earned a Standard rating, which means it was tested on finding but not removing viruses.
For antispyware protection, check back in November for these results.
Support
Once again, we were disappointed by CA's lack of technical support shown for its products. The built-in help file is light on details, and there is no manual. There is no online chat service nor online forums. In fact, finding the online technical support for this product is not easy (the CA Web site is primarily designed for corporate customers, not consumers). The online FAQ (once found) contains information for the 2007 version, not the current 2008 edition. And if you want to talk to someone about the product, that costs $19.95 per incident, although live telephone tech support is available 24-7.
Conclusion
Call us crabby, but CA still isn't up to speed with the competition on its consumer antivirus and antispyware offerings and thus not yet up to our standards. CA is known for its enterprise security and has over the years tried to break into the consumer market with limited success. This year's offering is a solid base, but that's it. In the future, we'd really like to see CA challenge Trend Micro, McAfee, and Symantec. We know CA has the corporate security tools, so how about bringing some of them down to the consumer level?
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
User Rating: 
2/10
free downloads spyware
Pros: free downloads spyware
Cons: free downloads spyware
User Rating: 
1/10
bad product. Let a trojan thru after using default
Pros: nothing at all. did not protect my system. Unable to do anything with it. I have a piece of software taking up room on my computer that can only be removed if I pay a technician 80 dollars plus tax.
Cons: Pricey ... the new update was imediately disabled by a virus and Now I am unable to uninstall and reinstall.
User Rating: 2/10
Choose another security software.
Pros: can't think of any good points
Cons: the application caused my windows vista to crash. I had to file the CA software in my garabage bin and shop for another antivirus software.
User Rating: 
7/10
I don't understand the criticism
Pros: Works great on all my PCs. No trouble with updates.
Cons: I don't have any.
User Rating: 1/10
Worthless Software, Worthless Support
Pros: Nothing...nada...zip...zilch
Cons: Software allowed 93 viruses to infect my computer on three different occasions; everytime the software doesn't work, you have to pay more money to make it work; they have the most useless tech support team on the planet.
The second time the viruses were too nasty for the free software and I had to pay the twenty dollars for their tech support to remove the viruses their software couldn't repel. The tech support guy told me he would call me back in ten minutes and I never heard from him again. I ended up just wiping the hard drive and rebuilding the computer.
Today, I found 93 viruses on my machine with the free software. The viruses had completely disabled CA Anti-Virus and wouldnt even let it scan or update. I broke down and paid the twenty bucks. I had to take the day off from work and have the tech-******* spend six hours on my computer. When it came time run the final scan, he told me everything was good and signed off. When the scan completed, the 93 viruses were still there. I called their tech support back and they said I had to pay another twenty dollars.
When I asked why the free anti-virus could detect 93 viruses(which I named) that CA could not, the new tech-lady told me that CA didn't think those viruses were a big deal.
Their entire tech support arrangement is a scam.
User Rating: 2/10
Do not purchase. Poor support and slows computer down.
Pros: Free product
Cons: Slows computer down
Poor customer service
User Rating: 7/10
It is the best software which give you a positive fact.
Pros: CA Anti-virus Plus CA Anti-spyware 2008 provides comprehensive protection against Internet threats that can jeopardize your privacy and diminish PC performance.
Cons: I nothing to say that I don't like about this product
User Rating: 1/10
slow, no sound, no secondary video output
Pros: didn't kill the computer, was able to uninstall
Cons: extremely slow, killed sound and video.
1) computer was extremely slow. I installed in on a machine with a Turion 64 X2 2GHz; both cores were used to almost 100%. I have Avast on my home machine (single core 1.8GHz) and I can barely tell it's there.
2) no more sound
3) no more video output to projector
I rebooted a few times to no use. Everything worked fine again after I uninstalled the software though. So it wasn't too painful. But yeah, since I won't even use it after I got it for free, I really wouldn't pay money for this software.
User Rating: 1/10
You'll Regret It If You Buy CA 2009
Pros: Easy to install and uninstall
Cons: Renders computer useless
User Rating: 1/10
Killer of OS and Applications
Pros: Company logo is cute. Price is competitive.
Cons: Extremely instrusive. Slows machine to a crawl. Can't uninstall. Customer Support is useless.
User Rating: 1/10
CA froze my system repeatedly.
Pros: It seemed to work well when it did work.
Cons: The program/suite will freeze Windows and you'll have to reformat your drive and reinstall Windows and all your programs.
The automatic update function frequently doesn't work and the program becomes useless. The taskbar icon will show an exclamation mark indicating that an update is necessary even though is presumably does this automatically. After connecting to CA's website and starting the update manually, the download appears to complete and delivers a message saying that the update was successful. However, the exclamation point on the taskbar icon will still be there. This indicates that nothing happened during the manual update even though the website has given the message that the upgrade was successful. Windows will tell you that your computer may be at risk due to out-of-date Virus Protection. The CA help menu tells you to uninstall and reinstall the software to fix this problem. Doing so may or may not work. I spent an entire Saturday on the phone with a very professional technician in Bangladesh whose accent WAS intelligible. He tried everything he could think of, but couldn't fix it. He refunded my $20 fee. I have also tried to use Windows' restore function with mixed results. Eventually, the system will freeze and you will have to reformat the disk and reinstall Windows and all your programs. This happened to me several times and I finally purchased Bit Defender which has worked so far. (I reinstalled everthing a couple times because I only have a couple programs on the Windows side of my iMac.) I initially thought the problem might be due to the fact that I am using an intel-based iMac driven by Boot Camp. However, the same thing has occurred on my Toshiba laptop. I have Windows XP Professional on both computers. Some reviewers seem to have had good luck, but my problems were so pervasive that I ditched CA entirely.
User Rating: 1/10
Capable of slowing your PC down to a crawl
Pros: able to be uninstalled
Cons: slow, slow, slow
User Rating: 1/10
Terrible Customer Service
Pros: Installation is easy
Cons: This program can COST you time and money
The problem is that isolating the cause can be costly to general user due to the number of programs that use the svchost.exe file. I found the biggest issue to be dealing with the customer service persons in India. They were difficult to understand, and spoke over me constantly as if they were reading from some script. Determining why my computer processing speed had slowed to less than 50% cost me money and time. This problem was directly attributed to the CA Anti virus software.
User Rating: 1/10
dido to all of the negative reviews above. This product locked up my computer down
Pros: cannot think of any except it had a rebate for the price of the product. Thank God it was free to try.
Cons: I have to shop for another product.
User Rating: 1/10
horrible product, tech support worse
Pros: I think it works on one of my PCs
Cons: Can't install anti-spyware portion of the software.
User Rating: 1/10
Ratshit Anti Spyware
Pros: Good interface
Cons: Unable to remove Anti Spyware using MS WinXP Pro "Add or Remove Rrograms"
User Rating: 1/10
Does not work in Vista
Pros: Works with XP
Cons: Crashes Vista
User Rating: 1/10
P.o.S. DON'T BUY
Pros: absolutely none
Cons: disaster installing,freezes PC,broke windows update
DON'T BUY THIS JUNK
There are two letters missing in C A
^ ^
R P
User Rating: 1/10
Don't install CA 2008
Pros: There are none
Cons: No tech support. Many bugs. Crashed internet connectivity on two computers after "upgrade".
If you look up a problem on their website, you frequently get the response that Tech Support is aware of the problem and will provide a solution in a future update. Well I can't access the internet anymore, so how the **** can I get the update.
Do yourself a favor, by a different security solution.
