Comparison Review Company and product: Fink Enterprises 11 Glen Cameron Road, Unit 11 Thornhill, Ontario L3T 4N3 416-764-5648 Telecopier: 416-764-5649 IRIS Antivirus Summary: Vaccine program with scanner. Cost $199 CDN, site licenses available Rating (1-4, 1 = poor, 4 = very good) "Friendliness" Installation 3 Ease of use 3 Help systems 1 Compatibility 3 Company Stability 3 Support 2 Documentation 2 Hardware required 3 Performance 3 Availability 2 Local Support ? General Description: The forerunner of Antivirus-Plus, Antivirus makes no claims of artificial intelligence. The program structure is very similar. For simple virus detection, Antivirus is recommended over Antivirus-Plus. Comparison of features and specifications User Friendliness Installation The disk is shipped write protected. The accompanying documentation is very terse (less than one loose leaf sheet), but sufficient to install and run the programs. (The distributor has stated that he is increasing the documentation, but is interested in keeping it short so as not to be too intimidating.) Further documentation is available on disk. Installation can only be performed from the A: drive. Installation is, however, very simple, although the options that are available are not explained. Ease of use Options for use of the CURE program (scanner/disinfection portion) are available from the command line, but also from an onscreen menu if invoked with no parameters. Alerts to the presence of a virus are not clear as to which program or disk is infected. The problem in Antivirus-Plus of not being able to run certain programs which amend or delete program files is not present in Antivirus. Any access to a boot sector infected disk will trigger an alert. The infected disk is not identified, but attention to which disk is being accessed will make this clear. How a boot sector is identified as being infected is not clear, but the behaviour of the program is indicative of "scanning" type operation. Therefore it is unlikely that "new" boot sector viri will be detected. However, there is some "change checking" with regard to the boot sector. How this is accomplished is not stated, and it did give one false alarm (showing a changed boot sector on a write protected disk.) Help systems None provided. Compatibility The program will detect and stop most common viri. The problem in Antivirus- Plus of not being able to run certain programs which amend or delete program files is not present in Antivirus. Company Stability IRIS has been a small but consistent presence in the antiviral field. Company Support Little available. Documentation Documentation is brief but clear, although the information given deals almost exclusively with installation. Reasons for choosing various options are not given. Hardware Requirements No special hardware required, but will only install from drive A: (shipped on 5 1/4" media). Performance The program will detect most common viri. The IMMUNE program will detect and "eliminate" a virus within a program, but will usually be able to allow the original program to run unhindered. Boot sector infections are "detected" on each access to the disk. When the system is booted from a viral infected disk, the viral program will become resident in memory. At the invocation of the IMMUNE program, the alert for an infected disk will appear. (Interestingly, the IMMUNE program will state that "!!No virus detected!!" on completion.) Memory scanners will still detect the virus resident in memory, but disks will no longer be infected. Disk editors are still able to write to the boot sector. (Note that this has only been checked with common boot viri. Others may not yield the same behaviour.) Local Support None available. Support Requirements The program is simple enough that support should not be needed for most instances. General Notes The Antivirus program appears, in most respects, to be better behaved than its Antivirus-Plus successor. copyright Robert M. Slade 1991, PCANTIVR.RVW 910308 ====================== roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca Ceterum censeo Wiley delendam esse Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER)