G Data Totalcare 2009

Computer users are spoilt for choice these days when it comes to choosing a collection of security software that can protect their computers from viruses and other online threats.

Totalcare 2009 from G Data certainly has a wide enough range of features to compete with popular rivals such as Norton’s Internet Security, as it combines anti-virus protection with parental controls for blocking unsuitable websites, along with the ability to block spam emails and even a feature for creating regular backups of your files so there’s a copy in case anything goes wrong with the computer.

However, it does have a few rough edges that could be tidied up in order to appeal to less technically knowledgeable home users. Things got off to a bad start as the manual recommends performing what it calls a ‘boot scan’ before installing the software.

This involves starting up your computer using the software on the Totalcare CD – rather than the copy of Windows that is installed on the computer’s hard disk – so that you can run a virus scan using the software on the CD. That’s a sensible precaution, but the manual doesn’t clearly explain how to start the computer from the CD, and when we did run the initial scan it took almost a whole hour to scan our test laptop’s relatively small 120GB hard disk.

To be fair, the program does have two separate anti-virus ‘engines’ that perform scans for viruses, so while the scans can take quite a long time you can at least be sure that they’re thorough. Other features didn’t work quite so well, though.

The parental control features that can prevent kids from looking at unsuitable websites are barely mentioned in the main manual, so we were left to browse through the program’s built-in help files to find the information we needed to set these up properly.

And while it’s possible to select different categories of website that the program can block, such as ‘drugs’ or ‘pornography’, there are no predefined sets of filters that are suitable for different age groups, such as teens and pre-teens. If you’ve got kids of different ages it could take some time to set up different sets of filters for each child. You can’t monitor chat programs such as MSN Messenger, either, for the purpose of filtering out bad language or making sure the kids aren’t giving out their phone numbers or addresses.

The program’s also a little expensive when compared to alternatives such as the Norton suite, as its £45 price tag only provides a licence that covers a single computer, compared to the three-PC licence provided by Norton for £50, and by other security companies for a similar price. Totalcare is available with a three-user licence for an extra £18, at £63.

So while Totalcare does provide a good range of online security features, it’s not quite as easy to use, or as competitively priced, as some of its rivals.