Trend Micro's AntiVirus plus Anti-Spyware 2007 came in dead last in our "Virus Stoppers" antivirus roundup test of eight products. Its disappointing finish was primarily due to its lackluster performance at detecting malware samples: The program missed almost one in five samples, for a poor catch rate of 82 percent.

Trend Micro did somewhat better at proactively detecting unknown malware using one-month-old signature files, but even here, its 43 percent detection rate was the third-worst showing. Coupled with a relatively expensive $40 price tag and no renewal discount, Trend Micro's performance leaves much to be desired.
On the plus side, the program installed smoothly, was easy to use, and includes good default settings for the average person, such as an automatically scheduled full-system scan. The software provides a user-configurable scheduled scan and checks for definition updates every 3 hours. These defaults are a snap to change via an intuitive and smooth interface that will appeal to even the most nontechnical user.

One particularly useful feature scans for known Microsoft product vulnerabilities. If a machine is missing an important security patch, for example, the application guides the user to Microsoft's Windows Update site to download and apply the appropriate updates and patches.

Trend Micro's AntiVirus scans e-mail traffic over the POP3 and SMTP protocols, but unlike almost every other program we tested (except for Grisoft AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus Professional Edition), it does not scan HTML traffic. Also, Trend Micro's product stands alone in being unable to launch a manual file scan through a right-click within Windows Explorer, a weakness that the company says it will remedy in future updates. And the application's antispyware protection has an annoying habit of labeling tracking cookies as dangerous spyware.

We tested the Vista version of TrendMicro AntiVirus plus Anti-Spyware 2007 for our "Virus Stoppers" roundup. An XP version of the software is also available.

-- Ryan Naraine