We've had a quick play with the new version - and we like what we see. Definitely one to stick in your PC toolkit for 2008.

McAfee puts out its VirusScan 2004 in two versions - boxed or downloaded and managed from the internet. Whatever way you do it, the installation is simplicity itself with no difficult questions to answer or confusing choices to make.

Norton AntiVirus (NAV) remains the world’s most popular anti-virus program -and for good reason. It is the ideal set-and-forget anti-virus protection that is as close to idiot-proof as anyone has yet got. However, it is not the cheapest and some of its competitors, such as PC-cillin now offer more for the money.

Norman Virus Control is a very unobtrusive anti-virus program that sits in your system tray and performs much like Norton AntiVirus from Symantec. It scans all incoming emails, new files, removable media and downloaded files from the internet as a matter of course without any user interaction.

AVG offers a free home user edition with free updates for the life of the product and that has made it popular with a lot of home PC users looking for a cheap anti-virus solution.

Kapersky Antivirus has been around for some time and often pops up on home computers as the uneducated user’s anti-virus software of choice. Unfortunately, it really isn’t as user friendly a program as it should be for novice users.

Computer Associates is offering a free 12 month subscription of eTrust to all Microsoft users as part of Microsoft’s international PC Protect campaign. The problem is that most home users will find it too difficult to configure.

The unusually named NOD32 is finding favour with a growing number of users despite its Spartan interface, which concentrates more on the nuts and bolts of the job at hand than trying to look good.

While this Spanish anti-virus program is hardly a household name in Australia at present, it is gaining in popularity through its availability on the internet. Its low cost (around $78) and plentiful features have been a strong selling point for people looking for something a little less expensive than the popular Norton or Trend Micro products.

Sophos Anti-Virus is clearly aimed at the enterprise market, with the minimum purchase being a 10-user licence, renewable annually. Unlike some of the other packages, Sophos is available for most operating systems including Unix, Open VMS, NetWare and Macintosh.

PC-cillin 2000 is extremely easy to set up out of the box, particularly since there are few setup screens to wade through during installation. PC-cillin was one of the few packages that scanned memory and critical files before installing, thus ensuring that it did not further spread viruses on an infected system.

PC-cillin is no longer just an anti-virus program - it is a full internet security suite that includes a personal firewall and spam filtering - and it costs between $20 and $40 less than the equivalent Norton product.