Trend Micro PC-cillin 12 review

Verdict:

Review Date: 21 Jul 2005

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

We've had mixed experiences with Trend Micro's internet security product.

The firewall is very good, earning four stars in our last test, but the anti-virus program regularly misses a few Trojans every time we test it and we consider it a distinctly average option. The anti-spam component was a revelation, however.

We were stunned by the accuracy of this program's spam-detecting abilities, with no adjustments to the default settings. It detected over 95 per cent of the spam and only classified less than five per cent of our real email as spam. These messages were similar to spam, and a few whitelist entries can solve this problem. You can also add email addresses to block.

Everything looks rosy if you use a standard POP3 client, and if you use Hotmail via Outlook rather than using a web interface, you're still in luck. But it doesn't support IMAP and there is a distinct lack of customisable options. It's silly to grumble about this because the detection results are so good, but you can't even change the port number of your POP3 server. This is useful if you want to use certain proxy utilities, or if your ISP uses non-standard settings on its servers.

PC-cillin costs only £20 a year after the first year, which is competitive considering the amount of software. Buy it for the combination of firewall and anti-spam but, for a very secure system, we'd install PC-cillin alongside an anti-virus package such as Kaspersky Personal 5 or F-Secure Anti-Virus. If you're on a budget, use Grisoft's AVG Free Edition anti-virus program (free.grisoft.com)

Prev Next

Get more reviews, tutorials and in-depth advice, every month with Computer Shopper.
Click here to try 3 issues for £1

< Previous Reviews : General Next >

Sponsored Links

Be the first to comment on this article

You need to Login or Register to comment.