And to encourage active participation in the beta programme, downloaders are being offered the chance to get a 50% discount on the price of the commercial edition of the software, provided they email in details of undiscovered flaws in the beta test edition.

Panda is also hosting a competition designed to encourage feedback on interface typos and functionality issues.

Beta testers sending in feedback will be entered into a competition judged by a panel of Panda's technical experts. The 10 beta testers thought to have made the best contributions towards improving the product will each receive a $200 Amazon voucher.

Key features of the 2010 suite include improved antivirus, proactive antimalware, antispyware, antiphishing and antirootkit technologies, as well as new antispam and firewall engines.

Like many of its peers, Panda is quietly working on enabling cloud computing security with its 2010 suite and many of the features of the package are optimised for cloud interactions.

Interestingly, unlike some other IT security vendors, Panda has made the minimum requirements of its 2010 suite relatively light, with a Pentium 150MHz-based system with just 128MB of memory and 290MB of hard disk space, needed to operate most features.

The TruPrevent option, Infosecurity notes, also requires a minimum of 1GB of memory to install and run.