I guess they used the last stable version
Pretty informative test.
They describe the tests in details - that makes it very trustworthy. As opposed to that German "av-test" company who just output a bunch of so-called "results"
They do some nice and thorough tests, including boot time test using Windows SDK (that is a cool approach, i bet noone used it before), installed size test, etc.
At the same time they did have some slips:
- it seems that they did not install the latest windows updates, (which is an unusual situation nowadays)
- they average file scans based on 4 runs (because they claim the first one is slower most of the times). That is incorrect approach, as normally AV scans the file once, and not 4 times in a row. What they should have done is to measure only the first scan time.
- the average is not correctly calculated in some graphs: there is a clear outsider on many tests that is like 1000% slower that the rest. That outsider should have been excluded from the "average". Also the scale on some graphs is messed up by that outsider, which makes it difficult to compare.
- they count amount of reg keys created. The number of reg keys does not affect performance in any way.
- there were no "virus detection" tests... so these tests are only about performance.