Trend Micro Internet Security - TechRadar UK

If your laptop connects to the internet, then you need an online security suite. There are is ever-growing choice available offering the same sort of tools, ranging from antivirus, spam, spyware and phishing protection, to firewall, parental tools and even privacy protection.

This new package has all the features we've come to expect from a security suite, but the footprint is a lot smaller, so you won't find it as resource-heavy as previous versions. We tested it out on a budget laptop with a Celeron M processor and 1024MB of memory and found it ran smoothly with little or no lag.

Trend Micro may not be one of the biggest names in the market, but this latest version works exceedingly well. The look has been updated, but remains easy to understand and simple to use.

Two scans simultaneously

Previous versions have allowed for antivirus and spyware scans to run at different times, which means longer scanning sessions. Thankfully, this has been resolved in this release, as they are run at the same time.

When it comes to checking for malware, this runs constantly in the background, checking the behaviour of your laptop and looking for anything out of the ordinary. This heuristic approach is a lot more impressive in this version and worked well.

There are two versions of the software available; the basic version costs £50 (inc. VAT), but lacks Remote File Lock, which is a neat solution should you have your laptop stolen or it gets lost, as it allows you to create a virtual vault that can remotely lock away all your data, so unauthorised users won't be able to touch your files.

Increasingly, we all have more than one laptop in the home, so you'll find this package covers up to three machines for the one price, making it a cost-effective purchase. Trend Micro Internet Security Pro has an impressive array of tools that work well together and is a great improvement over earlier versions.