The Lomans, Visionaries ?

We all know how well Hitman Pro has done this year. It and Prevx have to be the most successful vendors for 2009. Having said that, HP in reality in its current state is really nothing more then a paid version of MBAM that is free. Now don't get me wrong, because I have the utmost respect for the Lomans and know that HP is really only in its birthing stage compared to MBAM which for the freebie, is a complete product.

What they have found is what we all have know for a long time. No one product can keep you completely safe, thus we layer our cake. They decided to look outside the box and and put the burden of layering on the vendor, not the consumer. G-Data and a few others have found success combining scanning engines from joint vendors, but there is a cost. Space, hard drive space.

In looking at HP they were able to combine a multitude of scanning engines and in reality, no burden in size of what was added to the consumers hard drive. At this point it has worked almost totally flawlessly, but it has one draw back, "real-time." Thus the comparison to MBAM. If in 2010, they find a way to actually make this a real time scanner with its multitude of expert scanning engines, they are going to set a bench mark for all vendors to reach for, that may encompass the next 5 years. I don't know if this is where they are headed or if it can be pulled off, but the more we see vendors willing to contract their scanning engines out, I say it is a real possibility.

As a small vendor, why wither and die if you can latch onto a new idea of doing joint ventures with other vendors to create products that actually stand a valid chance in combating malware. I think this is what Bitdefender saw on the horizon and discovered a new way of venturing outside the box.

HP, aka, The Lomans, have decided to venture outside the box. And as stated earlier, just maybe getting ready to redefine the fight against malware, the way vendors perceive each other, and create a internally layered product for the consumer.

 

Some good points there. As we all know, one AV seems to never be enough, we always want a second opinion.

I think Hitman Pro in its current form with no real-time scanning, will continue to do well as long as it balances convenience (including speed of scanning, low impact on system resources, one click to start the program automates the whole updating/scanning process) with strong detection rates. Combined with a relatively low cost, and they have a strong product on their hands.

If real-time scanning is in the works, hopefully they continue to develop the stand-alone product. Users running returnil, shadow defender, sandboxie, defensewall, the list goes on, don't always require real-time scanning and Hitman Pro fits the bill.

Real-time scanning can bring a host of problems, as all developers would know. Conflicts with other software, resource usage climbing, slow-downs, BSOD and so on. Also requires more staff to deal with support issues from user complaints and concerns.

From what I can tell, Hitman Pro has minimal problems, and great usability.That's the attractive part with the program, almost anyone can run it, without any problems. Simple to use.

So before real-time is included, me personally, I would prefer features such as better scheduled scanning to be included, rather than just on start-up. Say a background scan that can scan every three hours for example without any notifications (except a simple 'Hitman Pro is conducting a background scan'). Anything found can be quarantined and analysed later. Not quite real-time, but getting close.

But back to the original topic, if you can continue to keep things simple and effective, to me that's visionary.