ESET Smart Security 7: newcomer brings top-notch protection

Eset Smart Security 7 ($60 for one year of protection on one PC) is relatively new to the U.S. market. This all-in-one security suite includes antitheft protection and a social media scanner. Unfortunately, though Eset offers good protection and a fairly intuitive interface, it puts a lot of stress on your system.

In our real-world (zero-day) tests, which include email and Web threats, Eset protected against 100 percent of attacks, matching the outstanding performance of F-Secure Internet Security 2014, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, Norton Internet Security 2014, and Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2014. Eset handled known malware well, too, blocking 100 percent of attacks from malware discovered in the month before testing.

Eset didn’t flag any safe websites our usability tests, nor did it try to prevent actions carried out while installing and using legitimate software, or warn users about them, or identify any legitimate programs as dangerous.

Unfortunately, Eset’s suite hobbles system performance. Its score of 8 tied Norton for the highest (and therefore least desirable) in our roundup; you can expect slower start-ups, and longer lags during downloads and installations with this security suite in place. During my test of Eset, my PC’s fan ran on high nonstop until I uninstalled the program.

Eset Smart Security 7's interface is a mixed bag, with both touchscreen-friendly buttons and checkboxes.

Eset’s installation process is a drag, too. You have to click through several screens, some of them separated by long downloads. Eset’s installer recognizes incompatible software (such as other security suites), but it can’t uninstall them directly. Instead, it asks you to go into your Control Panel and manually uninstall each incompatible program. You can skip this step, but doing so could abort Eset’s installation.

Eset’s main interface has a menu on the left for the main feature categories, which include scan, update, setup, tools, training, and help and support. A home screen shows you your protection status (a banner at the top displays “Maximum protection” in green when you’re fully protected) as well as any notifications or alerts.

Though Eset’s left menu is touchscreen-optimized, the setup menu isn’t: Each setting ties to a drop-down menu that lets you disable certain features for a fixed amount of time. A link at the bottom of the setup menu takes you to Eset’s advanced settings, which are even less touchscreen-friendly, with lots of nested menus and tiny checkboxes. The program does a pretty good job of explaining confusing terms and settings in plain English.

Eset has some nice features for newbies. The training link in the left menu takes you to videos, slides, and information about Eset’s security suite and about online security in general.

Eset Smart Security 7 offers very strong protection, and it’s a great choice for beginners—if you can accept the toll it takes on your system’s performance.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Review: DayZ turns frustrating military game into top-notch survival horror

I lasted just over three hours on my first day in the fictional Russian state of Chernarus. I'm told this is quite good, but just leaving the beach alive was victory enough for me. I pulled free of the bloodied arms grabbing at me, but it was dumb luck that found me sprinting frantically up a steep, dark wooded hill until I lost the gray-faced pursuers in the thickets and weeds. Exhausted, I lay down to hide but discovered I was wounded and bleeding. By the time I learned to use my single bandage, I was bleeding out.

A steep learning curve, but I had absorbed my first lesson: Stay out of sight. My second lesson occurred later that day, when I realized the sound of my rifle was a dinner bell. I died in the street with my legs broken, drowned in a mob of screaming madness. DayZ teaches by brutal example. Exposition is nonexistent, but once you learn something, you tend not to forget it.

Military simulator ARMA II's moddable, sandbox nature spawned unexpected offspring early this year when Dean Hall released his unassuming, open-world, zombie apocalypse mod for the game. 1.3 million users later, he's begun development of a standalone product destined to outsell ARMA II itself. DayZ is an honest gaming phenomenon.

You play from ARMA's familiar third-person cover-shooter perspective, a view you'll come to prefer over first-person for the situational awareness it provides in this game, especially under cover. The generally unpleasant, janky feeling of ARMA's engine is preserved, but works in DayZ's favor as imprecise aiming, motion delays, and other sloppy details only reinforce the survival horror mood the mod works overtime to present.

Get used to crawling in the weeds. You'll do it a lot if you want to stay alive in DayZ.

The goal is simple: Stay alive. You'll need to find water, food, shelter, and eventually weapons. Likely in that order. You can salvage preserved food, but hunting is also viable option. Blood transfusions restore lost health and cure ailments, but there's a catch–they require the assistance of another player to perform. In DayZ, fellow humans are potentially far more deadly adversaries than their undead counterparts. They lie, they cheat, they steal and they will kill you for a can of beans. Or, they just might save your life. Until you lower the gun and ask, you'll have no idea of knowing for sure.

Installation is a different kind of horror show. Both ARMA II and the standalone Operation Warhead are required for DayZ, and you need to complete a seven-step process that outlines the various installations, updates, launcher shells, and more before you can be eaten alive. Many things can go wrong along the way, and often do, judging by the pleas in forums dedicated to the game.

The code itself is famously unstable, described somewhat modestly as in an "alpha" state, but the biggest problems are gamers hacking the servers with bizarre, session-ending exploits. I experienced these frequently enough for it to be a legitimate concern, although the development team regularly takes measures to crack down on this behavior. Performance-wise, DayZ is no better than ARMA II, so plan to pack a firecracker of a system if you want smooth framerates and some visual pop. Laptops and milquetoast desktops won't stand a chance. Consider the system requirements a bit optimistic.

Staying alive is a simple goal, but not an easy one. Game over.

In this era of Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, it's shocking that it took so long for a game of this nature to be made, especially given the success of other games with similar themes but radically different mechanics, like Valve's Left 4 Dead series. We have zombies on prime time, zombies fighting plants, zombie sex stories, zombies everywhere. Why it took one guy doing it for free to make this happen is a question for the gaming industry to ponder as they watch the number of players continue to grow.

For those on the fence deciding whether to try the mod or wait for the standalone version, I advise getting involved now. There's nothing more uncertain than unwritten software, and by the time Dean's team gets into gear, the moment may be over. DayZ is here, now, and it's free. There's no reason to wait. The hungry residents of Chernarus are dying to see you.

Note: The "Try it for free" button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Canon PowerShot SX260 HS Review: Another Top-Notch Canon Pocket Zoom

Thanks to a hard-to-beat combo of very good image quality, a generous optical-zoom reach, ease of use, and flexible shooting options, every iteration of Canon's PowerShot SX line seems to end up at the top of our pocket-megazoom cameras chart. The latest camera in the family, the 20X-optical-zoom Canon PowerShot SX260 HS ($350 as of June 1, 2012), is another winner. Because it covers so many bases, it's one of the easiest point-and-shoot cameras to recommend for any user.

The 12-megapixel PowerShot SX260 HS's versatile lens, assorted shooting modes, excellent image and video quality, and manual controls all contribute to its high rating. You'll find only a few weak spots in this camera: It doesn't shoot RAW, it has mediocre battery life, and audio capture is a bit hissy while it's shooting video. Due to its extensive zoom range, it also has a relatively narrow aperture at the wide-angle end--but every pocket megazoom we've ever seen also has that shortcoming.

Performance, Image Quality, and Video Quality

In PCWorld Labs subjective tests for image quality, the PowerShot SX260 HS earned a score of Very Good in nearly all of our testing categories, namely in exposure quality, color accuracy, and lack of distortion. In image sharpness it received a rating of Good.

The camera's sharpness score suffered a bit due to a visible moiré effect in our target-chart sharpness test, and the camera's images looked a bit soft in our still-life test. Colors appeared bright and vibrant without the oversaturation we commonly see from many of today's cameras, and the SX260 HS's auto-exposure mode produced excellent white-balance and exposure levels in our hands-on tests.

Click the thumbnails to the left to see the full-size images we used in the PCWorld Labs' subjective tests.

In video capture, the SX260 HS again ranked among the best models we've tested in the pocket megazoom category, generating good contrast, pleasing colors, and fine details in well-lit situations. The test footage we shot in low light wasn't as impressive, but due to its performance in our bright-lighting test, we rated the PowerShot SX260 HS's overall video quality as Very Good.

As mentioned before, audio pickup through the SX260 HS's top-mounted stereo microphones is a bit of a weakness. Audio capture in video mode sounded hissy to our subjective jury's ears, so we gave the camera an Audio score of Fair in our tests.

The battery life is a bit of a downer, too; the lack of long-lasting juice is beginning to look like a common failing among many of Canon's recent point-and-shoots. The PowerShot SX260 HS has a CIPA rating of 230 shots per charge of its lithium ion battery, which falls in the Fair range of our battery-life scores.

Shooting Modes and Features

SX260 HS: Wide-angle (25mm)SX260 HS: Full telephoto (500mm)SX260 HS: Handheld NightScene modeSX260 HS: Low-Light mode (3 megapixels)SX260 HS: Color Accent modeWith a 20X-optical-zoom (25mm to 500mm) lens and a pocketable body, the 12-megapixel Canon PowerShot SX260 HS is already a versatile camera in terms of hardware. When you consider its diverse range of shooting modes, the camera becomes the photographic equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.

In addition to traditional manual controls for focus, aperture (F3.5 wide-angle to F6.8 telephoto maximum aperture), shutter speed (1/3200 of a second to 15 seconds), and ISO levels (ISO 100 to 3200), the SX260 HS has a number of creative shooting options to rival any competing pocket megazoom. It's a solid performer at both ends of its zoom range, with macro capabilities that let you get within 2 inches of your subject, and excellent optical stabilization when you're zoomed all the way. At full telephoto, the camera's stabilization system "floats" a bit, making it easier to keep faraway subjects in frame. In my hands-on tests, handheld shots that I took at full telephoto came out impressively sharp.

Along with the usual array of scene modes (Portrait, Smooth Skin, Sunset, Snow, Panorama Assist, Fireworks), the camera's scene menu has a few unique options. Smart Shutter, for instance, automatically snaps three photos when it senses that someone in front of the lens is smiling, making it an alternative for self-timer shots. And the SX260 HS's High-Speed Burst HQ mode shoots ten full-resolution shots per second, with focus and exposure settings locked at the first image in the sequence.

For low-light shooting without a flash, the camera has two dedicated scene modes that each go about their business differently. The Handheld NightScene mode uses burst shooting with exposure bracketing to create an HDR-like image in dark environments. The Low Light mode shoots a single 3-megapixel image, as the camera combines adjacent pixels on the sensor to increase light sensitivity. In my tests, the Handheld NightScene mode produced noticeably sharper, more-detailed images in dark settings, but both did a good job in low-light situations. You can see sample shots taken with each mode, in the same scenario, to the left.

The camera also has a separate mode-dial entry for its digital creative effects, which include a fish-eye simulator, a miniature mode that lets you manually adjust the vertical and horizontal plane of focus, black-and-white and vibrant-color effects, and a vignette filter that simulates a toy camera. Included as well are Canon's Color Accent and Color Swap modes, which remain the best implementations of single-color highlight features I've seen in any point-and-shoot camera. With these modes, you can isolate a single color in a black-and-white shot or replace all instances of one color with another in your photo, as you're shooting it.

The creative options extend to the SX260 HS's movie-capture modes, which max out at 1080p capture at 24 frames per second. In the camera's Super Slow Motion movie mode, you can shoot 640-by-480-pixel video at 120 fps and 320-by-240-pixel video at 240 fps. Miniature Mode is also applicable while you're shooting video, but the camera records at 6 fps and plays the video back at 30 fps to simulate an old-timey, fast-motion movie.

Other notable options on the SX260 HS's mode dial include a "Quiet" mode, which completely silences the shutter and disables the flash to help you capture that stealthy photo of a sleeping baby or a wedding ceremony, and a "Live" mode that helps novice shooters adjust the brightness, color saturation, and color temperature via on-screen sliders rather than delving into manual controls.

Hardware and Design

The PowerShot SX260 HS feels sturdily built, and it looks a bit more streamlined than most high-zoom pocket cameras thanks to its minimalist handgrip. A slender, raised bar on the front of the camera works well as a handgrip when you hold it with your middle finger, and a slight groove around the top edge of the camera provides a comfortable resting spot for your index finger when you're shooting one-handed.

The top of the camera hosts the pop-up flash, the shutter button ringed by the zoom control, the power button, and the camera's built-in stereo microphones. The back of the camera hosts a mode dial, which lies relatively flat on the surface and locks into place firmly with each mode selection.

Accompanying the mode dial and the 3-inch LCD screen are five more controls that handle most of the commonly used settings: a dedicated video-record button, a playback button, a four-way directional pad/scrollwheel (for quick access to exposure compensation, flash settings, macro/manual focus, and the self timer), a display-settings button, and a menu button. As for ports, the SX260 HS has a rubberized cover for a Mini-USB connector and a Mini HDMI connector on the side, as well as a metal-backed plastic door that covers the battery and SD/SDHC/SDXC slot on the bottom, next to the tripod mount.

GPS Features

The Canon PowerShot SX260 HS's GPS features are as basic as they come, but they work well when you're adding geotagged images to photo-sharing services that support mapping. The SX260 HS doesn't have any in-camera maps like the ones found in pocket-zoom competitors such as the Samsung WB850F, but it does add information to each photo's EXIF data that you can use with various mapping services.

The camera requires a clear view of the sky--and depending on your immediate environment, it can take a minute or so to establish your GPS connection. I tested the PowerShot SX260 HS's GPS functions in New York; at street level with a lot of tall buildings around, the initial GPS connection needed about 2 to 3 minutes, and the camera had trouble maintaining the connection. Once I went up to the roof of a building with a clear view of the sky, the satellite link-up took less than a minute and was less problematic.

After you create that connection, you have the option of turning on the camera's GPS Logger feature to refresh your location data periodically, even when the camera is turned off. As you might guess, leaving the GPS Logger feature on all the time will have a significant impact on battery life, so it's a good idea to use the feature sparingly if you don't carry an extra battery.

I didn't find much to look at on the camera in terms of geodata--pressing the Display button during playback showed raw longitude and latitude data for each geotagged shot--but once I offloaded a tagged photo to a computer, the info integrated seamlessly with the mapping functions in Flickr, Picasa, and SmugMug.

As with the majority of GPS-enabled cameras, the SX260 HS's GPS functions are a "nice to have" feature for frequent travelers and anyone who likes to geotag images. If you want in-camera mapping, you'd be better served by the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20 or the Samsung WB850F. Outside of its GPS features, however, the PowerShot SX260 HS is simply one of the best pocket-megazoom cameras we've tested, and its geotagging works well with popular photo-sharing services.

Bottom Line

You're probably familiar with the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none." The PowerShot SX260 HS blows that idea out of the water. This is a pocket megazoom that does a lot of things and masters quite a few of them, providing excellent overall image and video quality, easy-to-use controls for both experienced photographers and novices, and shooting modes that cover a whole lot of bases. It's hard to recommend a single camera for everybody, but in the realm of long-zoom point-and-shoots, this one offers as much universal appeal as I've seen.

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G Data InternetSecurity 2012 Review: Top-Notch Antimalware Protection

Our top pick in our 2012 roundup of Internet security suites is G Data InternetSecurity 2012 ($35 for a one-year, single-PC license as of January 25, 2012). Although its interface isn't terribly friendly to beginners, G Data's suite put up some of the best malware detection and blocking scores in the history of our testing.

G Data InternetSecurity blocked all samples in our real-world tests (which assess how well security software can stop previously unknown threats). It also spotted all but five samples in our “zoo” of 108,869 samples of known malware--the best score we’ve ever seen on this particular test.

In addition, G Data's package had a low false-positive rate, labeling only one known safe file out of a pool of more than 250,000 as possibly dangerous; you don't have to worry about it flagging a good file as bad. It rendered all infections on our test PC inert, and it removed all traces of malware 60 percent of the time.

This suite's impact on PC performance was fairly minimal overall, but it did struggle in a few areas. It finished our on-demand scan test (which measures how quickly a suite can scan 4.5GB of files when you tell it to do so) in an above-average 1 minute, 49 seconds, but its on-access scanner (which kicks in when you open or save files) processed 4.5GB of data in a slow 6 minutes, 41 seconds. By comparison, on average the products we tested completed those tests in 1 minute, 59 seconds and 4 minutes, 48 seconds, respectively.

The G Data suite added less than half of a second to startup and shutdown times as compared to a PC with no antivirus software installed--in both cases, the best result among the products we tested. It also produced a good result in our download test, adding only about 1.5 seconds compared to our test PC without antivirus installed. On the other hand, it slowed our test PC considerably when we loaded Web pages, installed software, or copied files over the network.

G Data's interface isn’t too impressive. Its installer is fairly painless, but it forces you to click through a number of screens and requires you to restart the PC before you can use the software. The main screen isn't significantly different from that of last year's G Data suite, which isn't a good thing. Reaching some commonly used features via the main control panel is difficult, since they’re often hidden in menus. And unless you’re an expert, the settings can be confusing--there are just so many of them. That said, the clearly labeled 'Correct' button that appears when a problem occurs lets you quickly and easily fix any issues that prevent you from being fully protected.

This isn't a perfect security suite, but the package excels where it counts most: stopping malware. If you can put up with some interface annoyances and sluggish scan speeds, G Data InternetSecurity 2012 is definitely a top-notch contender and worth your consideration.

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