Spyware, viruses, & security : Inquiry into reviewing methods.

An older P4 with 1GB of RAM...

by John.Wilkinson  - 5/24/08 3:37 PM

Cnet posts their general testing procedures for each product category, and while there are some variations you can click here for the details.

As to why the professional/user reviews differ so much, it's due to the test environment. While the test systems are not top-of-the-line, the software installations are also bare-bones. Subtracting all the background software most people have running results in a significant performance increase. Thus, the 'professional' reviews are generally going to be more positive than those form the average user. It goes beyond that, though, since they're scanning a single directory containing under 2GB of files, all of which are under 10MB in size and of particular file types. You are never going to encounter such a setup in real life. Since scanners are better or worse under certain conditions, such as scanning large files, scanning certain file types, etc, one may do well in the test environment but horribly when it encounters real-life conditions. Unfortunately this is nearly unavoidable to prevent a single test from taking four or more hours. That's why you have to consider the testing conditions and only compare the review to reviews of other products performed by the same reviewer/company.

Hope this helps,
John