Review by Matt Morgan

I have been a diehard Trend customer for a little while, and I have had no issues with their products until this version came out. Oddly, my issues with this version spilled over and fouled up the 2006 version when I rolled back. Not all is bad, but there is not enough good here to keep me in the ranks. I’ll talk about the good first, then discuss the bad.

I like the fact that Trend offers 3 installations per license, and this was a strong motivator for my upgrade from the 2006 version. With 2 computers immediately in use and another running a dual-boot config, the license scheme is a good option for me.

Installation is smooth and painless. I never had any issues with installation and I was up and running very quickly - typical of Trend’s installation process. Loading software should ALWAYS be simple and straightforward, and Trend has always provided such an experience to me.

Compared to the 2006 version, the interface is visually more appealing. This is largely cosmetic.

Most features of the suite are not appreciably improved, with the notable exception of the antispam component. With the 2007 edition the antispam has taken a large leap forward, in my case achieving a near 100% accuracy rate. This alone gave me serious reason to think long and hard about leaving Trend for another product.

Not everything is good with the 2007 edition, however. On one system, I experienced the massive slowdown about which many have complained (the culprit, by the way, is the antivirus component). On another system, there was no issue. The system with the problem was an AMD64-based system, whereas the other was an Intel P4 system.

I experienced another annoyance with the program which ultimately led me to decide on a new solution. Even though I had purchased a license and was covered for many months, about every 3 days Trend would complain that I was not registered and that I needed to submit my information to ensure that I was legal. Both of my installations were doing this, and when I would enter my email address again I would get an email from Trend that I had assumed the registration from myself and was no longer the registered user.

I downgraded to the 2006 version, with which I had had excellent results, and the registration issue continued on both computers. After fighting with this for several weeks, I uninstalled from both computers and loaded up Panda Internet Security 2007.

After 3-4 years of good packages and reviews, Trend let a lemon out of the lab with their 2007 edition. I cannot recommend it. While it works and it does protect the system, the issues I experienced assured that I would not be a repeat customer again.