What's on your PC? Everyone wants to know, especially spammers. And virus-makers seem to be releasing new strains every day.

How does a guy keep up?

Well the folks at Panda Software are hoping evil-doers will be unable to penetrate their walls of titanium or platinum, much like Superman couldn't deal with kryptonite.

I've been playing with Panda Titanium 2006 Antivirus + Spyware ($14.95 for three months of services) and Panda Platinum 2006 Internet Security ($24.95 for three months).

Now, at first glance you'd think that titaniumwould be stronger than platinum. But it turns out that platinum is the most precious of their products, offering privacy control, spam filtering and Web content filtering, which isn't available in the titanium version.

A feature unique to both products, though, is what the folks at Panda call TruPrevent Technology, which is the ability to block unknown viruses before your antivirus software has been updated. This is accomplished by analyzing the behavior of a file before it hits your computer. Essentially, if it looks like a virus and smells like a virus, it has to be a virus.

Other features of both versions of the product include:

• They have the ability to detect and eliminate all types of viruses.
• They can detect and eliminate spyware before it hits your computer.
• They can block intruders and hackers from gaining access to your computer, even through Wi-Fi connections.
• They update themselves daily via the Internet, downloading the latest virus and spyware definitions.
• They warn you when there is a high risk of infection on the Internet.

Now we come to your ability to use the products. To run the titanium version, you must have at least a Pentium 150 megahertz PC with 96 megabytes of RAM and 200 megabytes of free hard disk space. To go platinum you'll need at least a Pentium 300 megahertz computer with 128 megabytes of RAM and 300 megabytes of free space. Both products will run on Windows 98, ME, or XP.

Either product can be downloaded directly from the company's Web site at www.pandasoftware.com or you can order a six- or 12-month CD.

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