If you do n’t think the virus menace to your Mac is fearful enough to spend any money protecting against it , ClamXav will get the job done . It ’s based on a well - found open root project ( clamav ) , and provide a comme il faut grade of security ( thanks in part to casual update of its virus definitions ) . It be nothing to buy or update ( though the author does quest donations ) , so ClamXav is about as cheap as it gets .
For the price , it ’s a pretty equal to virus electronic scanner . you’re able to easily schedule scan via the built - in scheduler ( though you should note that a scheduled scan fail to run away when I intentionally put the Mac to sleep at the chosen time ) . ClamXav did a good task scan my test system ’s hard thrust , find all the malware we threw at it . The program was n’t fast about it , though : It take more than an hr and a half to scan our 13 GB program folder , which Intego VirusBarrier ( ) , for example , scan in 13 arcminute .
Unlike other , more polished antivirus apps , ClamXav wo n’t keep track of which folders it ’s already run down , so re - scanning the same folder will take just as long the 2d clock time as it did the first . And while the utile ClamXav Sentry app will glance over folders and files in actual meter , it only work some of the clock time in my testing — occasionally it spotted a test computer virus file cabinet immediately , but other times it missed it in all .
As you might carry from its price , ClamXav does n’t have the same characteristic fructify of some of its commercial competition . Its interface is operative , but not as pleasant to use as that of Intego and Symantec ’s Cartesian product . There ’s a lot of gray alloy scope , and both the buttons and their fonts are non - standard .
If you require more entropy about malware the plan notice , you ’ll have to navigate to theClamav homepage , where you ’ll find a searchable database of virus information . Unfortunately , the data you bump there may be light on item . A hunt for Leap - A , for instance , returned one seam , simply listing “ Trojan . Leap . A. ” By contrast , Symantec ’s Norton AntiVirus ( ) has a full pageboy of Leap . A information , including screenshots .
Macworld’s buying advice
Despite its user user interface issues and slow scanning speed , ClamXav will provide a good horizontal surface of protection for the distinctive user , and you ca n’t beat its cost . If you do n’t need to spend the money on Norton Antivirus or VirusBarrier X4 , ClamXav is worth considering , as long as you ’re mindful of its limitations and quirks .
EDITOR ’S NOTE : This is an update translation of our ClamXav critique , reflecting new support for ‘ drag to Dock ’ scanning in edition 1.0.3 .
