Trend micro titanium antivirus +2012 review

Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus +2012 is antivirus software that protects from viruses and spyware as well as all sorts of other malware: keyloggers, hackers, operating system exploits, dialers, malicious cookies and scripts, Trojan horses, rootkits and worms. It can detect and eliminate fake antivirus software.

Purchase of Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus + for Windows includes a copy of Trend Micro Smart Surfing for Mac. You can customize, or skin, your copy of this antivirus software with an image or photo. Independent test lab AV-Test certifies Trend Micro, and it scores relatively well in AV-Test results for protection and usability on Windows 7 and Windows XP.

Features

The features catalog for Trend Micro Titanium AntiVirus 2012 have been fairly slim for the last couple of year due their major focus on speed. They have neglected any advanced settings and left gamers and laptop users behind. Because most computers users are primarily concerned with antivirus programs drowning their computers speed. Although the features are not very abundant for this product, it made our list of Best Antivirus for 2012 due its superior speed compared to all the others we tested.

Interface

Titanium 2012 offers a marginally different interface from last year. The two differences are that the parental controls and system tuner have swapped places on the main screen, and that you can now apply skins to customize the interface. Not exactly world-shaking alterations, which is an acknowledgment of how the company feels last year’s major overhaul is doing. In a word: great! (Well, the company thinks it’s great, anyway.We certainly don’t mind it either.)

The UI that debuted last year was different and minimalistic, and is a great choice for people who don’t want to struggle with their security. The top quarter is taken up by a large icon and bar declaring your security status, and below it is your security summary and a registration status indicator. Click the boldface name to reveal more information; for example, under Security Summary, you’ll see number and type of threats stopped. This perhaps could be phrased better, since if no threats have been detected on your computer, then you will see that “0 threats have been stopped.” Accurate, yes, but slightly misleading, too.

The Support link lives in the upper right corner of the interface, marked by a text link and an icon of a boat’s lifesaver ring. At the bottom of the interface live a one-click scan-on-demand button to initiate a Quick Scan, a drop-down arrow to change scans, a Settings icon, and a Security Report button for jumping to a screen that collects recent threat detection, system performance, and parental control notifications into charts and graphs.

Help & Support

Trend Micro Titanium AntiVirus 2012 has a mix bag of support scattered all over the web. With its major support coming from several support options easily found on their website and support forums. Their support can cater to your every need by submitting your problems to a direct email or live chat. Premium support is also available but not free.

Effectiveness

In the absence of any recent independent test results you used Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus Plus 2012 against my own list of internet nasties. What you found was that the program detected each and every one of them. However, when you delved into the logs I found that not all were marked as removed – some were still merely stating that they were detected – you do wonder if that means they still pose a threat or whether they had in fact been neutralised?

+ Plus Points

• Quick to install
• Easy to use
• Quick to run (for the most part*)
• Low system resource usage (for the most part*)
• High detection rate

- Minus Points

• Whilst running a full scan CPU usage is very high indeed*, often hitting and exceeding 90%.
• A small selection of detected malware apparently not removed
• If you need ‘premium’ support you will have to pay for it

* Multitasking on my laptop was almost impossible during a full scan. However at other times, including when a quick scan was run, this issue did not present itself.

Conclusion

Although this antivirus software is AV-Test Certified, it does not receive the highest marks and other independent test labs have not tested it lately. Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus +2012 is rich in features and has good customer service. A couple of unique features are that you can customize your copy with an image, and purchase of the PC version includes a copy of Trend Micro Smart Surfing for Macintosh.