Coranti 2012 Multi-Engine AntiVirus & AntiSpyware – PC Magazine
If a small plane with one engine is fast, that same plane with four engines will be four times as fast, right? That's the idea behind using four antivirus engines in Coranti 2012 Multi-Engine AntiVirus & AntiSpyware ($39.99, direct). Of course, it's also possible that the weight of those four engines could burden the plane so badly that it goes down in flames. Unfortunately, the latter scenario is closer to Coranti's reality.
Living Large
The program itself installs quickly, but it won't do anything until it completes a big initial download of malware definitions. Coranti's user interface is also built on a big scale. By default its main window opens maximized, to make room for tons of status information and controls. It's quite a contrast to Panda Cloud Anti-Virus 1.5 Free Edition (Free, 3.5 stars), with its tiny, non-verbose main window.
From the general security tab you can view the status of each antivirus engine in the active protection and on-demand scan modes. You can disable any of them…but why would you want to? Digging deeper, you can configure five scan levels, five heuristic levels, and five levels of scan depth. You can set it to scan archives within archives up to 99 levels deep.
For the average user, this level of configuration detail makes no sense at all. If the settings are configured for optimal protection, the user can only make things worse by changing them. If they're not configured for optimal protection, well, they should be! Even if you do love micro-managing, your excitement may start to flag when you realize all those same settings exist separately for the real-time protection monitor. And don't forget to configure the antispyware engine!
Part of the reason the main window needs so much space is its redundant navigation systems. You can reach the various pages by clicking tabs down the left, clicking tabs across the top, or making a selection from the menu. It's too much!
Lab Test Confusion
Coranti uses antivirus engines from BitDefender, F-PROT, and Lavasoft, plus an antispyware engine from Lavasoft. Figuring out what the independent labs think of it is tough, though. Only Virus Bulletin has tested Coranti's unique protection mix. Out of seven tests, Coranti achieved VB100 status four times. Many of the best products got VB100 in all ten of the last ten tests.
F-PROT and Lavasoft are in the same boat. Virus Bulletin has been testing F-PROT since 1998, but it only got VB100 in six of the latest ten tests. Virus Bulletin has tested Lavasoft just three times, and it only passed once. None of the other labs include F-PROT or Lavasoft in their tests.
On the flip side, BitDefender gets stellar marks from all the labs. It received VB100 in nine of the last ten tests by Virus Bulletin. West Coast Labs and ICSA Labs certify its virus detection and cleanup abilities. In the latest on-demand, proactive, and dynamic tests by AV-Comparatives.org it rated ADVANCED+, the highest rating.
In antivirus certification tests by AV-Test.org, 11 of a possible 18 points are required for certification. Bitdefender averaged 16 points in the latest three tests under Windows 7, Vista, and XP, the highest average of all products tested. The chart below summarizes recent results from independent testing labs. For details on how I derived this summary see How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.
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