Panda Free Antivirus Editor's Review

Panda Cloud Antivirus is an anti-malware package released by Panda, a computer security software firm. It is notable for scanning files on a remote cloud-based server network, thus freeing up your own computer's processing power. 

Good antivirus (AV) software is crucial in this age of widespread malicious code. Without AV installed, your computer could fall victim to malware within minutes. You need AV that can protect you against a range of threats -- not just traditional viruses, but Trojans and other types of malicious code. Unfortunately, AV software often slows down your computer, increasing boot times and consuming processing power that your other applications need to function optimally.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is advertised as protecting your computer from novel threats that some general AV packages can't deal with. These include Trojans, spyware, worms, and hacking tools. Panda also spots scams and pranks, as well as non-malicious applications that could pose a security risk. 

The main selling point of Panda Cloud, however, is its cloud-based operation model. Instead of scanning files on your own computer system like most AV software, Panda conducts its scans on a cloud system of networked servers. This significantly reduces the impact of Panda on your computer's resources. Panda still increases boot time by a small amount and has a noticeable effect on some packages (including Microsoft Office software), but still has less of an impact than comparable software. The chief drawback is the threat to privacy posed by sending your files to another company's remote server for scanning. 

Pros: Free, low resource footprint, effective against a range of threats.

Cons: Serious risks to privacy.

Conclusion: Panda Cloud AV performs well against a range of threats and is light on system resources, but poses a risk to privacy.