CA Antivirus 2007 review

In the past, CA antivirus products have gone under various names, such as eTrust, eTrust EZ, Vet, and InoculateIT; now, under the name CA Antivirus 2007, the company hopes to eliminate brand confusion. Whatever you call it, the CA antivirus engine is good, winning honors from several independent testing labs over the years and providing the AV component to several Internet Security suites from other vendors. But despite its antiviral pedigree and a company cash guarantee to keep your system virus-free, CA Antivirus 2007 still suffers from program interface glitches and poor technical support, details which tempered our overall enthusiasm for the product.

Setup
We downloaded CA Antivirus 2007 in a matter of minutes. We like that during installation, the CA privacy policy won't allow you to accept or deny the EULA until you actually scroll through the text (even if you don't read it, at least you are aware of it). Unlike Norton Antivirus 2007, which only runs on Windows XP, CA Antivirus 2007 runs on Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP. And unlike other $39.95 single-license antivirus programs we've seen this year, the $49.95 CA Antivirus 2007 comes with a three-user license. What's more, CA has decided to offer their CA Anti-spyware 2007 application as a separate $29.95 purchase--while Norton and McAfee VirusScan Plus both include anti-spyware along with antivirus protection.

Do note: should you purchase CA Antivirus 2007 online and use a credit card, CA will automatically renew your annual subscription. You will receive an e-mail before renewal explaining the automatic billing. If you do not want CA to automatically renew your subscription, you need to discontinue the Continue Protection program (details on disabling the program are contained with your online order receipt). Boxed retail versions are also available.

Should you decide to uninstall CA Antivirus 2007, there is unfortunately no uninstall icon in the All Programs directory,. You'll need to use the Control Panel's Add or Remove Program function. Fortunately, unlike Norton and McAfee which both leave unnecessary files and registry keys behind, CA Antivirus 2007 uninstalls completely.

Interface
The CA Antivirus 2007 interface is clean and straightforward. The left-hand navigation icons offer a choice of Overview, Quarantine, Options, and Reports. The Overview screen contains Main Tasks (Scan my Computer, Select files, and Folders to Scan), Status, Top 5 Virus Threats, and Latest Threats (which includes phishing and non-viral threats). Like McAfee and Norton, CA offers a one-button Secure Now, designed to bring your security status up to speed quickly.

In the course of our testing, we sometimes needed to stop a complete system scan. In doing so, we witnessed our security status change from a yellow triangle with exclamation point, warning us that we had not completed a system scan, to green, indicating that we had completed a full scan and that our system was clean. We were able to replicate this error several times. We also discovered that CA Antivirus 2007 will run up to seven days before it will flag you that it's missing the latest antivirus update. We suspect these are minor interface glitches; however, this problem could expose users to unchecked dangers.