Trend Micro AntiVirus
Trend Micro is a Honk Kong based antivirus company. They offer a very impressive line of products. Their most basic software package protects against just virii and spyware, they also offer products combining their antivirus and spyware software with a firewall. Prices start at $39.95 and work up to $69.95. Trend Micro also offer an online service called “House Call”, it is very popular and actually better (in my opinion) than McAfee Online Virus Scan. Trend Micro does give you a free trial of 30 days on all of their products, so you may try before you buy, however, the only truly free product is the online scanner.
Trend Micro has been innovative in recent years. Most recently, in 2008, they released a product called Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. This piece of software monitors your whole network and actively seeks out and destroys malware and viruses, think of it as a sheriff roaming the network. Trend Micro’s software has had its highs and lows, through the early 2004s, it was and still is used today by MSN (Microsoft) for scanning Hotmail mail attachments on behalf of the user (which stinks when you’re trying to send viruses for legitimate reasons), they have also become popular in small businesses and some educational facilities. Trend Micro also maintain an informative blog, where today, I read about the latest internet happening, a worm called Koobface, which is essentially a piece of malware that posts video links and other links of the creator’s interest on your behalf on a social networking site called Twitter.
The completely free virus removal and scan tool is called Trend Micro Housecall, what it is, is a client that you download to your computer. This acts as a container from which the scanning processes spawn. Unlike it’s chief competitor House Call is cross compatible among Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms. The only requirement is they run either Java or ActiveX. It started fine for me on my Gentoo Linux system and also worked on my test box (Windows XP SP3). I was happy to see that it was surprisingly quick too. Trend Micro’s Housecall had (2/2/2008 publishing date) two exploits found in their ActiveX control, the first in the writing of it, the second in the implementation. Trend Micro were warned of these problems and fixed them less than a working day. Additionally, many third party groups had workarounds while waiting for a fix.
In conclusion, Trend Micro is a great company with fantastic products. The free trial is available on all of their products (even the $70 software), so what’s not to like? They are responsive in fixing problems with their software and have a great knowledgebase. The online virus scan and removal tool is great in so far as it’s fast and effective. Trend Micro’s antivirus is as good as they come and you’ll be hard pressed not to like it as it provides up to date free virus protection for all with an internet connection.
Free Trial – Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 – Protect your home network, personal identity, and online activity. It guards against present viruses, spyware, and identity theft as well as the web threats of tomorrow.
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