PCIMMUN2.RVW 950928
Comparison Review
Company and product:
Company: Higher Ground Diagnostics, Inc. (cf Trend Micro Devices)
Address: 901-F Robinwood Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43213 or 4061 Riverlook
Parkway, Marrietta, GA 30067
Phone: +1-404-951-9466, +1-614-236-4602, +1-800-741-BRAD (-2723)
Fax: +1-614-236-4804
Sales: John Luke, Benefit Sales Inc., PO Box 11825, Daytona Beach, Florida
32114-1825, +1-904-677-9600, fax +1-904-677-0040, mmn@america.com
Product: Immune II (cf PC-Cillin)
Summary: scanner and activity monitor
Cost U$40
Rating (1-4, 1 = poor, 4 = very good)
"Friendliness"
Installation 1
Ease of use 3
Help systems 2
Compatibility 2
Company
Stability 1
Support 2
Documentation 1
Hardware required 3
Performance 1
Availability 1
Local Support 1
General Description:
This appears to be a shareware distribution of the PC-Rx (non-hardware) version
of PC-Cillin, formerly produced by Trend Micro Devices. There are modules for
scanning, activity monitoring and Windows display functions.
Comparison of features and specifications
User Friendliness
Installation
As received, the package was in an archive within an archive within encoded
email. Potential users would need MIME64 and ZIP format extractors.
Installation is not well documented. There are notes dealing with various
conflicts and incompatibilities. It is likely that users will need to check
and change a number of settings, and will need to read all the assorted text
files to find out what those might be.
An INSTALL.EXE file was contained within the innermost archive file. It was
corrupted.
Ease of use
A graphical front end is provided.
Once a scan has been started, it cannot be terminated. An attempt to terminate
a lengthy scan crashed the test computer hard.
Help systems
Invocation of some modules without correct command line switches gives a list
of switches.
Compatibility
Numerous incompatibilities with various programs are listed in one of the text
files.
Company Stability
This is going to require a bit of background.
My first introduction to this incarnation of the product was in a posting on a
virus discussion group infamous for the posting of virus code. The subject had
a "get rich quick" flavour to it, and I at first assumed that it was simply
another spam message. I was surprised to find that it actually did seem to
refer to an antiviral product. Subsequent email indicated that the party doing
the posting was either the author of a "get rich quick" book or the producer of
an infommercial seminar. The author of the antiviral program was said to have
asked for help with direct sales, and the marketer was purported to be so
impressed with the product that a deal was struck for distribution rights.
However experienced the sales company is in the world of TV and mail order,
they obviously have a few things to learn about life online. When the promised
"free trial version" arrived, it did so as an 800K MIME (base64) encoded email
message. The person doing the mailing, now identified as John Luke, made
contemptuous remarks to the effect that the Internet "doesn't work". (It can
be safely assumed that Mr. Luke is as unfamiliar with Internet tools as he is
with Internet marketing: not only was MIME used instead of the arguably more
accessible uuencode, but a subsequent copy, said to fix various bugs, would not
extract.)
Extraction of the base64 file produced a self extracting ZIP format archive,
which, in turn, contained another self extracting archive. These were
accompanied by buggy installation batch files, and unhelpful, all uppercase,
difficult to read text files containing such gems as "BE SURE TO THEN READ,
UNDERSTAND AND AGREE TO THE LICENSE THEREIN ENTITLED BY THE FILE NAME
FREELICE.TXT."
Benefit Sales, and John Luke, appear to be selling on a pyramid construction,
as indicated by the advice "MAIL A CHECK OR MONEY ORDER FOR $40 TO BECOME A
REGISTERED DISTRIBUTOR. YOU WILL RECEIVE $5 FOR EACH $40 IMMUNR [sic] II SALE
YOU GENERATE AND YOU WILL BE GIVEN PERMISSION TO DISTRIBUTE THIS FREE TRIAL
VERSION TO INTRODUCE IMMUNE II" in one of the text files and his email address
(mmn stands for "Making Money Now"). Other text files buried deeper inside the
archive seem to indicate that the developer/producer of the program is Higher
Ground Diagnostics. Careful examination of the programs, and some text files,
reveals the names PC-Cillin and Trend.
Trend Micro Devices produced and marketed PC-Cillin in 1991. At that time it
had a change detection component that used a hardware storage device connected
to the parallel port of the computer. Later Trend produced a software only
version called PC-Rx. They sporadically produced a newsletter for customers.
I removed the review of PC-Cillin from the 1996 edition of the book because I
was no longer at all certain the company still existed.
On the face of it, Trend has either folded or dropped this particular product.
It may have reverted to the original programmer. However, the careless
preparation, including comments such as "Confusing Section........!!!" in the
documentation, allow a more sinister construction of the facts.
In short, I have no idea who any of these people are, and I certainly wouldn't
trust them with the security of *my* computer.
Company Support
One comment in a text file indicates support is by mail and phone from Higher
Ground Diagnostics at the Ohio address.
Documentation
The documentation is careless, inconsistent and incomplete. There are
references within the program to check the Immune II manual--and one reference
in one text file which says a manual is available once you register.
System Requirements
One of the text files states that almost two megabytes of disk space is
required for use. In testing slightly over one megabyte was used.
Performance
The package is slow enough that at times I thought the test machine had locked
up. Numbers of viruses detected is below par for current scanners.
Scanning of file archives compressed with the ZIP format is said to be
supported, but in tests failed utterly.
A bug in PCSCAN will recursively check directories which do not exist, but
which are all reported to have the same contents as the current directory.
This appears to go on without limit.
Previous concerns with the performance of PC-Cillin in activity monitoring do
not appear to have been addressed.
Local Support
None provided.
Support Requirements
In its current form it is unlikely that novice users could install or
intermediate users could get much out of this program.
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995 PCIMMUN2.RVW 950928
======================
ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca RSlade@cyberstore.ca
The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it - J. Gilmore
Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94311-0/3-540-94311-0