Regular Readers, feeders and subscribers will know by now that apart from publishing irregularly I also stear clear of soap box style stuff.

I don't preach and I don't rant.

...that much.

If you want a good free AV: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

However I feel it important to share with you all how upset I have become with Panda AV. This particular AntiVirus program used to be great now it's more "grrr, eat up the memory".

I wrote to Panda and told them what I thaught:

While you (the person reading this message) are likely just be unfortunate enough to work for a useless company I, never-the-less, wish for you to pass the following message on to those cretins who are responsible for the huge waste of time that has become trying to use a computer with Panda AV on it.  Additionally, where appropriate, please engrave this message on sharp flints and shove said flint (with the aid of a large mallet) in places these idiots are unlikely to ever forget about.

(Thank you message to pass on follows)

You program now does far more harm than good.  I hope that after having this message permanently placed where the sun does not shine engraved upon sharp stone you will understand why you should offer me a full and complete refund.

I have had enough of this BS.  When I first got Panda it was smooth, fast, efficient, small and great.  Now it is a steaming turd that does more to crash my computer, lose me data and generally screw up anything I was trying to do than all the Virus, DDOS, Spam and spyware attacks I have endured combined.

Lobotomised goldfish could create a more stable program and Microsoft has proven this on more than one occasion.

It is a liability to run the stupid thing while doing any real work, as it will randomly crash complaining of non-specific thread errors and force a restart.

It is no longer about waiting for the TTC (Time until crash) of an inactive MS-OS (measured in days) but the same for your so-called protection, which is measured in minuets.

If it is going to be one of those particularly shite days and your idiot monkeys banging keys on a keyboard manage to send out a lot of updates I may have to restart my PC up to three times before Panda AV Platinum will even let me use it.

It would seem to me that you lead programmers and analysts could not pour water from a boot with instructions written on the heel.

It creates pop-ups that have no close button and despite the fact I have contacted you on any number of occasions with full technical details and screen shots you fail to act.  Even politicians have a better public image then that.

The program is now a black hole into which all processor time and memory are sucked.

I have to disconnect from the network to get any work done and if I wish to use the more resource heavy programs I must unload Panda and risk needing to restart any number of times before I can get the PC to run without being disrupted by your bug ridden malware.

Outlook now takes between ten and thirty minuets to boot and often crashes completely remaining useless for days at a time now that the email scanner has fully wormed it’s way in.

Your Spam filter is so weak that my “message rules” catch 75% to 95% Spam than your filter at a fraction of the time too.  Please engrave this paragraph on a large fish and beat the team who wrote that useless filter with said fish until they understand that they should get on their knees daily and say a word of thanks that useless monkeys, like they, even have a job.

The firewall will sometimes stall and deny me access to the Internet and refuse to exit memory thus demanding another panda induced re-start.  My grandma could probably invent a more useful method of security than the current “up-to-date” firewall I have from your company.  I ask only that you personally collect the CD of the software I have from you and personally attempt to insert it in the left nostril of your CEO, chairman or other senior idiot whom I hold doubly responsible for my hardship.

Despite repeatedly setting panda to allow all forms of communication from IPs matching the range 10.0.0.0 to 10.0.0.255 your software repeatedly blocks the router, and the other local PCs and attacks and often disrupts my FTP channels in a similar manor weather running passive or not firewall configured or not. 

Furthermore, the process of authenticating chat clients and other point-to-point communication software takes longer than it should as randomly the firewall will bounce a reply and it will not arrive.

Hell on a government made corporate scale network it even blocks the internal server and router paths and internal DNS.  Some users even report that SMTP fails from some PCs… but all that is another story I wish to complain about my experiences with your companies crap.

After scanning down the log with this in-mind guess what remains – go on guess.

That’s right nothing!

A child of five could do a better job wish a penknife and a box of matches.  Call that useful and necessary protection because I do not.

As you can see the software I have from you fails in all regards to meet the criteria for which it was sold.  Additionally it is description as a “tool” and as “protection” is untrue.  You will be aware that I am fully and morally entitled to a full if not double refund and re-imbursement to the tune of sufficient cash to go and buy a real anti-virus program.

You can email the funds to my PayPal account using this address.

¶ 1:18 pm