Total Protection 2013 combines antimalware
with a cloud component and twin antivirus engines, a firewall, antispam and
parental controls.
The main control panel is busy, but it’s
easy to find your way around. On the right are separate panes covering the key
functions, such as scanning and updates, plus secondary functions such as
parental control and tune-up. Oddly, the colour scheme of the latter makers it
look as though they are greyed out and unavailable.
G
Data Total Protection 2013
To the left are two real-time graphs of
processors usage, so you can see at a glance how intensely the CPU is working
in general and on protecting your machine.
You can direct scans at specific folders or
files, but there’s no Windows widget for quick single scans. Of the other
modules, the Tuner does an effective job of mainstream housekeeping, such as
defragmenting hard drives, and also suggests improvements it can make.
We tested the scanning component with our
usual 50GB basket of assorted test files. On the first run it scanned 8,809
files in just over 30 minutes; in two subsequent runs it checked the same
number of files in 7 seconds. This is because Total Protection 2013 uses
fingerprinting to ensure it checks unchanged files only once.
G Data automatically scans a PC while it’s
idle, which means it has a low system footprint. It took 57 secs to copy a 1GB
file with a G Data scan running in the background, which is only 17 secs longer
than when the system was idle. The copy time was extended by 42 percent,
putting it in fourth place among the suites we’ve tested in performance terms.
In
the Protection part of the test, G Data was awarded 5.5 out of 6 points. Total
Protection detected all new and established malware, but lost half a point to
zero-day attacks.
Independent testing Iab AV-Test awarded G
Data Total Protection 2013 15.5 out of a possible 18 points. This is a very
good score, if not the highest on record.
In the Protection part of the test, G Data
was awarded 5.5 out of 6 points. Total Protection detected all new and
established malware, but lost half a point to zero-day attacks.
Under Repair, it was able to remove 100
percent of malware components, and repair 73 percent of critical system changes
(the average here is 63 percent).
G Data lost 1.5 points in Usability, with
AV-Test accusing it of fostering a greater-than-average system slowdown. We
were surprised by this, given its preference to scan during idle time and
speedy performance in our own tests.
Verdict
With an innovative fingerprinting technique
speeding up its file-scan performance, we found G Data Total Protection 2013
very fast to scan our PC – although AV-Test would disagree. This security suite
is well featured, and its antivirus protection is thorough. However, it’s also
expensive, particularly for a single licence.
System requirements
Windows XP/Vista/7; 1GB RAM
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Details
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Price: $60 (1 PC)
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Contact: gdatasoftware.com
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Read more: tinyurl.com/bvyh7ug
Verdict: 3.5/5
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Usability: 3.5/5
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Features: 4/5
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Value: 3/5
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