Trend Micro Internet Security Pro - PC review

9 December 2007 11:00 GMT / By Stephen Patrick

We’re all accustomed to the need for every PC in the house to have internet security software loaded on it. There is an ever-growing choice of tools out there all offering the same sort of protection, ranging from antivirus, spam, spyware and phishing protection, to firewall, parental tools and even privacy protection.

The latest version from Trend Micro has all these in place and we found they worked well together. The interface has been updated but it remains clean and easy to use with all the main features grouped together and listed down the left-hand side.

One of the problems we had with the previous version was that scans for viruses and spyware were carried out separately, but this is no longer the case. Now carried out at the same time, you’ll also find the suite isn’t as resource heavy and will run in the background without your system slowing down too much. As with all modern packages, the scanning for malware runs constantly in the background, checking the behaviour of your PC and looking for anything unusual in terms of performance. This heuristic approach has been beefed up in this version and we found it worked exceedingly well.

Taking up 350MB of hard drive space, this latest version runs smoothly on quite average specifications, so will comfortably run on older PCs or budget notebooks. At least, that was the experience we had.

This being the Pro version, there are elements you won’t find in the basic package. For instance, you’ll find Remote File Lock, which is a neat solution should you have your machine stolen, or in the case of notebook’s lost, as it allows you to remotely lock a virtual vault that can only be entered using a password. This means unauthorised users won’t be able to access important data. Naturally, the machine will have to be online in order to activate it.

As with other security packages, you won’t find just antivirus tools but also performance enhancers. System Tuner clears out all the dead registry entries and generally cleans up your hard drive, which can help speed up performance. It’s not the most sophisticated tool but it works well.

If you use Windows Outlook Express as your email client, you’ll find an icon is now added to your taskbar. This highlights that Trend Micro is checking for spam. The filter works for other clients, such as Thunderbird, but doesn’t add the icon. Limited just to Outlook though is a new feature that adds addressed to your contacts list, which can save time.

Increasingly, we all have more than one computer in the home, so you’ll find this package covers up to three machines for the one price, making it a cost-effective purchase.

Verdict

Trend Micro Internet Security Pro has taken many of the flaws in the previous version and addressed them.

This has resulted in a vastly improved package, we found protected our test machine exceedingly well, making this an impressive package to use.

Score

Review Recap

Made by: Trend
Price as reviewed: £55
The good: Improved functionality, slighter interface
The bad: Can be slow to load
Quick verdict: With a less resource heavy load and improved feature list, this year’s model is now on a par with the market leaders
Score