No defenses are provided for IM-related malicious code. Criminal hackers increasingly are using popular chat applications, such as Yahoo Messenger, to send code or links leaded to viruses and Trojans. Other products, such as McAfee VirusScan Plus, will stop those messages before they land on your desktop. We're surprised that Trend Micro doesn't support this protection in its antivirus product.
Trend Micro Antivirus plus Antispyware 2007 doesn't protect against phishing scams either. McAfee has its SiteAdvisor plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Norton has its own protection for Internet Explorer. Trend Micro has released a beta of its new TrendProtect, a free download designed to compete with McAfee SiteAdvisor.
Performance
The antispyware portion of Trend Micro Antivirus and Antispyware is excellent, fast at a scanning, but often didn't give us the choice to remove something--it did it for us. In exclusive testing by CNET Labs, Trend Micro's active shields identified and blocked seven out of eight spyware samples we attempted to install, missing only one generic Trojan, Compare-prices.zip. For scanning and removing existing spyware samples, Trend Micro performed the best, catching and removing everything. As for the removal itself, in only two instances did Trend Micro leave some spyware residue behind, ranking it among the top three apps in this regard.
In terms of antivirus protection, Trend Micro Antivirus plus Antispyware 2007 scored in the middle range, falling behind Norton and McAfee in most tests, and well short of our best performer, Kaspersky Anti-Virus. On our iTunes test, the Trend Micro's new software gained ground compared with last year, taking 199 seconds as opposed to 236 seconds last year. On our Sorensen Squeeze test, it also improved, taking 285 seconds compared to 303 seconds last year. The product also showed improvement with individual file scans, now taking only 150 seconds, as opposed to 188 seconds last year. And in terms of boot speed, Trend Micro Antivirus plus Antispyware 2007 improved, taking 63 seconds, compared to 68 second last year. To find out how we ran these tests, see CNET Labs' How we test: software: antivirus page.
To determine how well a product will protect your PC, we refer to test results from two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. CheckVir.com ranked PC-cillin as one of four products to earn its Advanced rating, which means the product was tested on finding and removing antivirus threats. PC-cillin was not reviewed by AV-Comparatives.org.
Support
Trend Micro is the only security vendor to offer free telephone support for its products. That's good because the online technical support information for Trend Micro Antivirus plus Antispyware 2007 was not that good. Perhaps that's because it's a new product. Still, we found the FAQ to be lacking information. And unlike Trend Micro Internet Security 2007, this new product has no tutorial for the standalone antivirus application.
Conclusion
We're glad that after many years of confusion around its Internet security suite, Trend Micro has provided a standalone antivirus app, but we find it lacking. Perhaps next year Trend Micro can beef up the application's offerings. In the meantime, if you're looking for a standalone antivirus application that's light, fast, and a consistent winner of detection awards against the competition, Kaspersky's the one.
What You'll Pay
- Set Price Alert
