Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008
$44.95
 |
This year's offering by Trend Micro is much better than last year's abysmal display. This new "Pro" version of Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 includes Wi-Fi verification, PC performance tunning, and identity-theft protection among its usual features of antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and a hand-full of other notable features. However, Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 has some serious drawbacks too.
For one, the installation process is well known to be extremely difficult (and sometimes not even possible on highly infected systems). Their parental control features are minimal and almost worthless.
Their firewall doesn't stand up to rigorous attacks. And their wireless protection is not very impressive.
Editor's Overview
- Great anti-virus
- Great anti-spyware
- Average firewall
- Decent anti-spam
- Poor parental controls
- Terrible anti-phishing
On the Plus Side
Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 gets good marks in the antivirus and antispyware departments from several independent testing labs for accuracy and removal. Trojans and all manner of malware are easily destroyed – once the system is installed and clean.
That's where testing showed the major problems with this year's Trend Micro. On several occations, the installation process got stuck either during reboot, updating, or on the install itself. Reboots had to be done several times to "unstick" itself. Eventually it was installed, but not through lack of serious effort. Most users wouldn't put up with this for a second. However, once installed, Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 performs very well in detecting and removing malware.
Internet Security Features
- Anti-virus
- Anti-spyware
- Email safety scans
- Protection against rootkits
- Proactive intrusion blocking
- Anti-spam
- Two-way firewall
- Home network protection
- Website authentication
- Parental controls
- Data theft prevention
- Protection against ID theft
- Wireless hotspot verification
- PC performance tuning
- Free phone, email, chat support (North America only)
Firewall Protection
The good news about the firewall is that once installed, it does a very good job at protecting your PC against real-time threats.
The bad news is, any motivated malware writer can easily turn off the firewall protection. Testing showed that the firewall could easily be terminated by tweaking the registry settings before the firewall could restore them. Not good enough in our book.
Wireless protection is too simple. It only reports if other computers are logged onto the network every 30 min – not in real-time. By the time you realize someone else is on your network, it could be too late.
Anti-spam: Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 adds a toolbar to Outlook Express, Outlook, and Windows Mail and does a good job at filtering out spam from POP3 email accounts.
However, Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 may not work on any non-supported email client.
The Parental Controls are virtually worthless. Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 allows simple restriction settings, but is easily rendered useless if your child uses Opera or some other browser besides Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Plus, there's not option to limit or control the time your child spends on the Internet. And there is no scheduling option.
Anti-phishing. Internet Explorer and Firefox's built-in phishing filters did far better in blocking phishers than Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 did making this year's antiphishing virtually worthless.
Support
Free phone, email, chat support (North America only)
Conclusion
Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 all the usual features including a few extras thrown in for good measure. The antivirus and antispyware features are excellent, but we can't give this product a higher rating because of it's on-off firewall. The same goes for its terrible installation experience.
Consider
Kaspersky Internet Security Suite or
BitDefender Total Security instead.
System Requirements
- Windows Vista Home Basic (32/64 bit)
- Windows Vista Home Premium (32/64 bit)
- Windows Vista Ultimate (32/64 bit)
- Windows XP Professional or Home Edition with Service Pack 2 (32 bit)
- Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 or 2005 (32 bit)
- Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2004 or 2005 (32 bit)
$44.95
|
|
