Reviews

The holiday season is here, as are the accompanying parties and celebratory events. If you're all gussied up, you might as well bring a camera like Sony's fashion-conscious, 10.2-megapixel Cyber-shot DSC TX1 ($380 as of 11/23/2009), a touchscreen camera that lets you party instead of fussing with camera settings.

Measuring 3.75 by 2.38 by 0.66 inches and weighing five ounces, the DSC-TX1 is small enough to fit into a coat pocket, and it won't take up a lot of room in a purse. The metal body has a front panel that slides down to reveal the camera's 4X Carl Zeiss optical-zoom lens, which has a range of 35mm to 140mm. A power button is on the top, so you can turn on the camera to peruse your pics and still have the lens protected while the camera is in your hands.

The Toshiba U505-S2980's main gimmick is a multitouch touchscreen. Outside of that, it is, for the most part, a decent laptop, even above average in many ways. But that one gimmick is the root of my issues with this 13-inch notebook--and helps raise its cost to a somewhat pricey $1050 (as of 11/24/09).

Because the panel is a touchscreen, the U505-S2980 suffers from grainy picture quality. This exacerbates a more basic problem of the screen just being dim. Viewing angles and backlighting are all right--the hinge actually sets the screen to the perfect angle when the unit is fully open--but the screen is really not bright enough. What you wind up with is a display that's made too many compromises for an idea that just doesn't work in practice. (In all fairness the touchscreen variant of the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s and the Dell Latitude TX2 were also a little dim--it's not something unique to Toshiba).

The Memorex MyVideo HD pocket camcorder won't bowl you over with its performance or build quality, but its feature set represents good value for the price. For a fairly low price, it offers decent-quality 720p footage in bright light, as well as a few features we've seen only on pocket camcorders that cost at least $50 more.

Kaspersky's third-place ranking in our roundup of stand-alone antivirus programs reflects its ability both to impress and to disappoint. It pairs competent proactive protection with below-average signature detection, and a strong feature set with an at-times annoying user experience.

In traditional detection tests performed by AV-Test.org, this Russian-made program ($60 for a one-year, three-PC license) detected 97.27 percent of known malware samples--lackluster when compared with the performance of some competing apps we tested, which caught 99 percent or more of the threats. It fared better in heuristics tests that gauge how well a program protects against new malware with no known signature. At a time when the bad guys crank out astounding numbers of malware variants to evade traditional signature scanners, such proactive protection is more important than ever. Here Kaspersky came in third with a 66.83 percent block rate.

Symantec's Norton AntiVirus ($40 for a one-year, single-PC license) offers some terrific extra features and a polished user interface. But subpar performance in one detection category prevented it from capturing the top spot in our chart of stand-alone antivirus programs.

In traditional detection tests using known Trojan horses, spyware, worms, and other baddies, Norton successfully detected 99.5 percent of samples from AV-Test.org. That's a good showing, but other apps did even better, leaving Symantec's entry in a middle-tier sixth place in this category.

ESET NOD32 has some nice, techie-focused extras and it effectively ferrets out rootkits, but it can't keep up with other antivirus apps when it comes to the essential task of blocking malware. It came in ninth place out of 11 in our current ranking of stand-alone antivirus software.

NOD32 lagged behind every other program we tested when it came to detecting known malware with signatures. Against AVTest.org's huge store of known Trojans, spyware, and other malware, its block rate of 94.8 percent was decent, but strong performance from the majority of the apps we tested has raised the bar.

Most security programs use a single antivirus engine, but the German-made G Data ($25 for a one-year, single-PC license, as of 11/20/09) uses two separate engines: BitDefender and Avast. That double coverage may have helped it rack up an impressive 99.95 percent block rate for traditional, signature-based detection of known malware, a rate better than that of any other app we tested. It was likewise strong at blocking annoying adware, running up a 99.8 percent score, and these strengths helped it earn top billing.

G Data's dominance continued on heuristic tests that use two-week-old signature databases and newer malware to simulate how well a program can detect threats that don't yet have a signature. In this test, G Data blocked 71.9 percent of the samples used by AV-Test.org--again, the best mark we saw. And in behavioral detection tests--which checks how well antivirus software recognizes malware based solely on what it attempts to do--G Data again led the pack by blocking 12 out of 15 test samples.

Avira's AntiVir Premium Edition lacks an advanced malware detection feature used by top programs, and it could use a smoother interface. The program earned a seventh-place ranking in our current stand-alone antivirus roundup.

AntiVir proved capable at detecting known malware, detecting 99.3 percent of AV-Test.org's collection of more than half a million samples of Trojan horses, worms, spyware, and other kinds of malware. In past tests, that kind of showing would have earned a top rank in the category.

Though Alwil Avast Professional Edition ($40 for a one-year, single-PC license, as of 11/23/09) has a speedy scan rate, that wasn't enough to offset its unimpressive protection from malware infections and its truly annoying interface. With a last-place showing in our stand-alone antivirus rankings, it's clearly a less than ideal choice for your paid protection. (A new version is coming early next year--see the end of this review.)

Avast's ability to block Trojans, worms, and other baddies in AV-Test.org's huge "zoo" of collected malware wasn't bad--its detection rate stands at 97.8 percent--and the program proved particularly adept at blocking worms with a 99.5 percent block rate. But most of the other programs outperformed it; Avast was only good enough for eighth place in signature-based malware detection.

BitDefender Antivirus ($30 for a one-year, three-PC license) holds its own at dealing with malware, but its interface isn't especially user-friendly. Overall the program earned fourth place in our roundup of stand-alone antivirus programs.

This Romanian-made software did well in traditional detection tests that put it up against a collection of known malware kept by AV-Test.org. BitDefender detected 99.66 percent of all samples in a huge cache of spyware, Trojan horses, worms, and the like. But several other apps did even better, so that showing was good enough only for fifth place.