Panda Titanium 2006 Antivirus + Antispyware produced middle-of-the-road performance results, and it lacks the basic capability to run a scheduled system scan. Add a relatively expensive price of $50, and you get an antivirus product less appealing than some of the others we tested for "The New Virus Fighters."

    This product differs slightly from Panda Platinum 2006 Internet Security--the latest iteration of the full Internet security suite with network firewall that earned a Best Buy in our "Best Defenders" roundup of antispyware programs last year. Our detection and cleanup tests this time around didn't include spyware and adware but instead focused on the programs' ability to detect viruses, backdoor programs, bots, Trojan horses, and worms.

    Panda Titanium 2006 Antivirus + Antispyware, which costs $50, gets you combined antivirus and antispyware protection, but unlike with Trend Micro's PC-cillin suite, which costs the same, you don't get a personal network firewall. And if you want to schedule periodic virus scans, you have to upgrade to the full $80 Panda Platinum 2006 Internet Security Suite. The interface is functional, but is not exceptional at explaining configuration options.

    Panda Titanium ranked fifth out of ten products overall in our performance tests. It ranked seventh in detecting backdoor programs, bots, and Trojans in our zoo collection of malware, and it ranked sixth in our heuristics tests using one-month-old data. However, the software blazed through our scan speed tests in just under 1 minute, 46 seconds on average, faster than any other product we tested.

-- Tony Bradley