PCTBSCAN.RVW 910612 Comparison Review Company and product: Frans Veldman ESaSS B.V. P.o. box 1380 6501 BJ Nijmegen The Netherlands Tel: 31 - 80 - 787 771 Fax: 31 - 80 - 777 327 Data: 31 - 85 - 212 395 (2:280/200 @fidonet) c/o Jeroen W. Pluimers/Smulders P.O. Box 266 2170 AG Sassenheim The Netherlands work: +31-71-274245 9.00-17.00 CET home: +31-2522-11809 19:00-23:00 CET email: 2:281/521 or 2:281/515.3 email: PLUIMERS@HLERUL5.BITNET FTHSMULD@rulgl.LeidenUniv.nl ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca!rulgl.LeidenUniv.nl!FTHSMULD Thunderbyte Scan promotional programs Summary: Resident and non-resident scanner and boot sector repair programs Cost free of charge Rating (1-4, 1 = poor, 4 = very good) "Friendliness" Installation 2 Ease of use 3 Help systems 3 Compatibility 2 Company Stability 3 Support 2 Documentation 2 Hardware required 3 Performance 2 Availability 2 Local Support 1 General Description: The programs tested are TBSCAN 2.2 dated 910314, TBRESCUE 1.2 dated 910211, and TBSCANX 2.6 dated 910419. These are "freeware" (no charge but copyright) programs distributed to promote the Thunderbyte security card (product not available for testing.) The scanners use IBM's VIRSCAN signature file format, and are very fast, but provide no disinfection. Comparison of features and specifications User Friendliness Installation Installation is a matter of copying the programs to disk and deciding how to run them. The documentation, while clear enough as to use, does not supply much in the way of direction as to the invocation of, say, the resident scanner, TBSCANX. In another sense, the "use" of TBRESCUE is also its "installation", in the production of a repair file, while it could be used, in its "compare" mode, to check the system areas at boot time. While an experienced user will be able to determine how best to use these programs fairly easily, novice or intermediate users may not have sufficient information to use them effectively. Ease of use The programs are fairly easy to use. The command line switches should not be strictly necessary for effective use, but can provide significant extra information or use for the expert. Help systems If invoked incorrectly, the program displays a brief summary of the command line switches. Compatibility During testing significant problems were encountered. The documentation does warn against the use of resident or pop-up programs, and this may have contributed to the problem. At this time, the problems remain unresolved. On one machine, TBSCAN would fail to check any files after a memory checking program had been run. No error message was displayed. Company Stability Unknown, but one report indicates that the company has recently made a significant sale to Phillips. Company Support Contacts with the company have been sketchy so far. Documentation The English documentation is definitely written for the intermediate or experienced user, and contains numerous grammatical errors. It does, however, provide some helpful and realistic discussion of the limitations of these types of programs. (This is to be expected, since the programs are used for the promotion of the hardware card.) Hardware Requirements None stated. Difficulty was encountered in running the program on an old IBM compact/portable, but may have been related to programs run before TBSCAN. Performance TBRESCUE will not work on a "floppy only" system. TBSCAN and TBSCANX fail to identify the "Stoned" virus in memory, although TBSCAN will identify it on disk. TBSCANX will not alert you to a boot sector infection when accessing (DIR or other) an infected disk. TBSCANX 2.2 failed to identify the Jerusalem virus in infected files, although TBSCAN would identify them on disk. TBSCANX 2.6 has fixed this, but no longer permits you to run the files. It still does not, however, prevent Jerusalem from "going resident" and infecting other files. (Subsequently infected files, for some reason, will run, although TBSCAN will terminate with no error message. It will do this when infected with a virus as well.) Local Support None provided. Support Requirements On a "scan only" basis, the program is simple to use. Installation, and disinfection will require expert assistance. General Notes The speed of the scanner, and its ability to use IBM's VIRSCAN signatures (and have the user extend the signature file) make this a handy tool for "first line" defense. It does not, in its present state, seem advisable to depend upon this product alone. Also note - although the documentation states that the program is free of charge, occasionally when invoking the TBSCANX program a message appeared urging the user to register this "evaluation copy". copyright Robert M. Slade, 1991 PCTBSCAN.RVW 910612 ====================== roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca "This is a very good sign, [that someone] is a humanist, a universal spirit, too interested in too many things to become a monomaniac. Only a monomaniac gets what we commonly refer to as `results'." - Albert Einstein Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER)