Review by J. Donaldson

How do you review an Internet Security package? Well I had to think about that and this is what I came up with.

1) What I want more than anything is to be protected from viruses, phishing attacks, and intruders of all kinds. Does it protect me while I’m doing some online purchasing or banking? Some of this is hard to test without deliberately accepting a virus or phishing attack which I wasn’t about to do. Some of the professional reviews did thorough jobs of checking these features with mixed results - hence my 4 stars instead of five. This is the most important feature and I’ll leave it up to the experts to sort it out.n2) How easy is the software to load and operate?n3) Does it in any way hinder the normal operation of my computer?n4) Does it have the set of features I expect?nnTrend Micro Internet Security Pro (TMISP)did a good job in all aspects as far as I could tell.

I loaded this software on a fresh build on my laptop, a brand new Windows XP Professional system with all new drivers. It loaded without incident in only a matter of minutes, then asked if I wanted it to check for online updates which I did and there were none. I was able to set up the features I wanted quickly and easily using the rather easy to understand Graphical User Interface.

I checked the boot up time for windows before loading TMISP and then checked after loading it. The first time I did this it took some extra time, apparently to set it self up. The subsequent start up times were not noticeably slower than without TMISP.

I tested the TMISP firewall by turning it on and attempting to connect to the computer from two other computers on my home network. The firewall completely blocked my attempts. I then turned off the firewall and the program warned me that I had turned it off but allowed me to disable the warning; nice.

This product is feature rich including everything I was looking for and a couple of things I wasn’t expecting. It protects email, internet transactions, keyloggers, and some web browsing. One of my favorite features is I can load it on up to three computers for the price of one.

A nice built in graphic display of my home network is a bonus. Also in the Pro version there are some additional tools such as a dashboard showing how many threats were encountered and protected.

I was able to turn on automatic updates so my virus protection will always be up to date.

So far so good. I’ll update this review if I find anything to complain about but for now I’m happy with this product. I do intend to install it on my three home computers and replace the software I had been using. Norton was a heavy load on my computer and I’m glad to uninstall it (if I can!). So far TMISP isn’t impacting my computer the way Norton did.

The Amazon site does a pretty good job of exposing more features but there are more than listed. To me this is a keeper.