eTrust EZ Antivirus 2005 (6.2)

Setup and interface of eTrust EZ Antivirus 2005 (6.2)

Computer Associates eTrust EZ Antivirus 2005 is easy to install: download the diminutive 4.12MB setup file, launch it, and click Next several times to load eTrust. In our informal tests, EZ Antivirus 2005 automatically downloaded its latest viral signatures (as all good antivirus programs should) and scanned our test computer once its setup was complete. A full scan of our test system (a 600MHz Celeron CPU, with 256MB of RAM and a 14GB hard drive) took about 20 minutes. During the scan, we were able to work normally in Word and Internet Explorer with only a slight performance degradation--a strong indicator of eTrust's light impact on system performance.

The program's uninspired interface features an old-fashioned file tree and tiny, indecipherable icons that mimic the aesthetic splendor of Windows File Manager circa 1995; it is unchanged from version 6.1. That's bad news for novices who want to schedule unattended scans; change the default action on infected files, for example, clean or delete; and so on. Yes, there's a handy Options Wizard that steps you through these basic configuration tasks, but you'll need to comb the menu bar first to find it.

One nice addition to EZ Antivirus 2005 is a taskbar tray icon that flashes when the program notices antivirus detection problems, such as when a virus attempts to disable your antivirus protection. To access more details about a given problem, right-click the flashing icon to trigger a pop-up dialog box. In our tests, the icon flashed often, warning us of a problem with the AutoDownload feature, which retrieves updated signature and program files. The problem later resolved itself, although we never discovered what caused it.