Panda Cloud Antivirus is an antivirus software by Panda Security; available in both free and paid version. It is cloud-based in the sense that files are scanned on a remote server without using the processing power of the user’s machine. The cloud technology is based on Panda’s Collective Intelligence. The upcoming product is Panda Global Protection 2013 and now it is available in its beta version.

Panda Global protection offer all in one protection for your PC, it has Antivirus, Internet security, Parental protection, PC tune up and many other features. We can use this beta version for 4-6 month and it will expire in  2013 february.  So, you get about 4-6 month for testing. Panda also offers a prize of 200$ for testers. So if you are lucky, you have a chance to get 200 bucks with the free antivirus.

Installation :

You can download Panda Global protection from here. Installation is done online, it will download the data and start installation automatically, make sure you have an internet connection. It won’t take long for a faster connection it will only take 6-8 minute or less. Give your Email and country and follow the instructions for remaining steps.

Interface:

The interface got a face-lift in the new version. You can refer the image below. You can see many beautiful square buttons. Setting button is placed on the right top of the windows just below the close button. You can reach Licence, Update wizard, preference pages. PC tune up, USB vaccine, Safe browser, Network management. The icons are placed on right bottom side.

Features:

Panda Global protection 2013 has features like Parental Protection, PC tune up, USB vaccine, Safe browser and Password manager which is a new feature in Panda Global protection 2013. Password manager can store your account information in an encrypted manner.

Quick scan took only a few minutes but the full system scan took around 3-4 hrs to complete, I don’t like to wait for a long time so stopped it after 78%. If you want a fast scan we prefer F-secure for you, which is faster and somewhat better than Panda in terms of scan speed.

Parental control offers five different type of filters, Kids filter which will filter all pornographic, crime, gambling, games etc. Teen filter is also similar to Kid filter. Third one is the Employee filter, which can be used to block Facebook, Google plus and other social networking sites to prevent employees from wasting time of social networks. Fourth and fifth are Personalised and No filter respectively. You can customize which categories are to be blocked.

Anti Spam is used to filter out spam emails. You can create a list of trusted friends or other people so that panda won’t scan those mails and all other mails will be scanned.

PC tune or Optimization provides two type of optimization options. One is Defragmenation, which defragments your files and make your system is fast. Clean up utility cleans your temporary files and make your system free from unwanted files. Temporary files can be created in many ways, one is during software installation, which create many files but these files become useless after the installation. Google chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet explorer like web browsers create web temporary files which is also unwanted. Clean Up will clean temporary files, junk files, broken shortcuts etc..so you will get more free space.

Safe browser, which is not included in this package can be download – it is free. The installer file is 2.5mb in size but you need to download 77 mb during installation. We don’t prefer it for you.

Highs :

• Good interface
• Password manager
• Parental control
• Safe browser

Lows :

• It takes more time for a full scan
• We didn’t find any ‘update settings’ option to disable updates

Verdict:

Panda Global protection 2013 is a beta version , final version will take 4-6 month. We can test this software for 4-6 month. Beta testers will get 50% reduction in price apart from a chance to win $200.