Call me paranoid, but I don't have any confidence in Panda. Back around 2000-2002, Panda nearly got booted out of the
Anti-Virus Product Developers Consortium . Seems they withheld information about a new virus from the consortium for 48 hours while they disseminated lots of press releases trumpeting the benefits of Panda AV because it was the first AV in the world to detect this virus (and no, I don't remember what it was called), even though consortium rules stipulate the information should have been shared with members within 24 hours.
That might not sound like a big deal, but it turns out that the virus in question was only found on a single server in Spain (one guess as to where Panda is headquartered) and the server was taken off the 'net within a few hours of the discovery. No further reports of this bug in the wild ever surfaced.
Also, Panda stopped submitting their software for evaluation by
Virus Bulletin following 2 failures out of 3 submissions. However, they announced that if Virus Bulletin would let Panda conduct the same tests in-house, Panda would be happy to report the results. Amazingly, Virus Bulletin declined.
However, you can find plenty of wonderful reviews of Panda Cloud; just not from most reputable AV review sites. Sure, PC Magazine's Neil J. Rubenking gave it an Editor's Choice Award for Free Antivirus Software, but so what?
First of all, given that NO AV software is 100% effective, and that many nasties may either disable your Internet access or access to anti--malware sites, why would you want a strictly "cloud based" security program running on your computer? Most anti-malware solutions would let you install an update from a pendrive even if your Internet access was compromised, and you could then run a scan with the installed software.
Secondly, I've been reading Rubenking's reviews for a long time, and I frequently find myself wondering if he and I live on the same planet. I might disagree with fans of AVG, or SuperAntiSpyware or other anti-malware programs, but I have never read reviews that are so at odds with my own experience as Rubenking writes. For the record, I've run a computer services business for 12 years, and over the last 5-6 years, I have averaged about 2-3 malware removals per day.
