Vipre Antivirus and Antispyware requires Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista; it is not compatible with Windows 95, 98, or ME, Macintosh, or Linux. The 15-day free trial is fully functional; a review of the paid product can be found on CNET Reviews.
Installation takes a few minutes and does not require a reboot. After installation, a wizard asks a few predictable questions. Overall, the Vipre interface is one of the cleanest we've seen on any antivirus product. It's intuitive and easy to use. Four tabs across the top take you to Scan, Manage, Tools, and the overview page. Much of what we like about Vipre is beneath the hood--which is where it should be. Vipre scored well in both our CNET Labs' Windows XP performance tests, however, there are no public, third-party tests that we can point to at this time.
What we like most about Vipre, though, is that it packs a lot of extras--extras that other antivirus products should have but often do not, such as a secure file eraser that writes 1s and 0s over deleted files, a history cleaner that goes beyond just what's in your Internet-browser cache, and something called PC Explorer, which reveals processes and services running that are suspect or known to be malicious.
Many of these tools are also featured within Sunbelt Software's standalone-antispyware product, CounterSpy v2. Missing from Vipre is firewall protection. Sunbelt Software does not provide an uninstall function; you will need to use the Windows Control Panel's Add and Remove Software feature.
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