TotalAV

You can access the four main systems of TotalAV either by clicking one of the four big buttons or by selecting from the menu at left. The circles on the buttons change color to reflect security status; the sliders on the color scale below have the same effect.

When challenged with a collection of malware-hosting URLs, TotalAV's Web Shield (for Chrome and Firefox only) blocked access to some of the URLs. Tested under Internet Explorer, it eliminated many the malicious payloads before the download even finished.

When I launched malware samples that weren't eliminated on sight by TotalAV's real-time protection, some of them managed to plant malware-related executable on the test system. In this case, the malware installed 47 files before TotalAV got busy removing them.

You can choose a quick scan that looks in memory and in places malware likes to hide, or a full scan of the entire system. Surprisingly, the full scan repeatedly re-found all the files it had previously quarantined.

The Web Shield component steers your browser away from malware-hosting URLs and from fraudulent (phishing) URLs. It did well in the malicious URL test, but tanked the phishing protection test.

System Boost has three parts, managing startup programs, uninstalling unnecessary applications, and deleting browser history. You could accomplish all three without resorting to an antivirus.

The Junk Shredder component recovered nearly a gigabyte of disk space by deleting useless files. Note, though, that it doesn't actually perform secure deletion; it just deletes files bypassing the Recycle Bin.

TotalAV's Password Vault keeps an encrypted store of all the passwords you enter. Note, though, that there's no automatic password capture and replay, nor can you sync between devices.

Adding a new password is a completely manual operation. You type in a friendly name, copy/paste the URL, and enter your username and password. You do get a strength rating for your passwords, and you can invoke the password generator when appropriate.

Impressively, TotalAV includes a full-scale easy-to-use virtual private network (VPN). You can connect through servers in 45 countries, including some that other VPNs skip, for example, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine.

The Android edition provides the same four main security systems as on Windows, though they work somewhat differently. Password management isn't included.

The iOS edition of TotalAV has an extremely limited feature set, so much so that it's entirely free. Its battery monitor reports the time you have remaining for various activities, and the photo manager identifies photos you may want to delete. That's the extent of it.