Panda Antivirus has announced a maintenance release for its cloud-based free antivirus tool. Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5.2 promises better performance, a new search engine for its toolbar add-on and a wide number of bug fixes.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is designed to minimise its impact on system resources by tapping into cloud-based processing power to do much of the security tool’s leg work in analysing, blocking and attempting to remove malware infections. This makes it especially suitable for deployment on low-spec and older PCs.

Although version 1.5.2 is described as a “maintenance release”, it does promise some major improvements. The headline features are improved on-demanding scanning speeds, particularly on Windows 7 machines. It also promises improved integration with the Collective Intelligence backend server that it uses to identify malware, which should mean that protection against new malware variants is obtained quicker than before.

Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5.2 also updates its optional toolbar to version 3.0, replacing Yahoo! with Google as its search engine.

There are also numerous bug fixes and stability improvements: files are now deleted without slowing down the computer, while there should be no more blue screens of death when drivers are being unloaded. Issues reported by AV-Comparatives scanning certain types of folders have also been resolved, and an upgrade prompt should no longer appear every 20 minutes either.

Version 1.5.2 also promises to fix various disinfecting issues regarding malware sharing a specific format and characteristics, as well as malware running in memory under certain conditions.

Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5.2 is a free download for PCs running Windows XP or later. A beta of the forthcoming Panda Cloud Antivirus 2.0, which includes a firewall in addition to antivirus protection, is also available for testing purposes only.