Trend Micro was one of the top-rated antivirus programs a few years ago. Despite an overhaul this year and renaming the product Titanium, it's still the same-old antivirus program that has been a disappointment in recent years.


1) Installation:  ⁴/₅

On our reference machine*, Trend Micro Titanium installed in 2 minutes and 38 seconds. The installation procedure does not require a system restart.

From a user interface standpoint, Trend Micro sports one of the easiest installation procedures of all of the programs we've reviewed this year. After requesting your product key, Trend Micro downloads the latest available application updates and finishes the installation without further prompting. After installation is complete, you must log in to your TrendMicro.com account and activate Trend Micro on your machine. Unlike many of the antivirus programs we've reviewed, Trend Micro Titanium doesn't begin protecting your computer until you click the Activate button on your Dashboard. This seems like an unnecessary step, but doesn't ruin an otherwise pleasant installation process. *Reference Computer: Windows 7 Home Premium running on a Toshiba Pentium Dual-Core T4200, with 3GB of RAM and a 210GB hard drive. 2) Features & Ease of Use:  7.5/10 While other vendors have focused on finding ways to compress multiple options onto their dashboards, Trend Micro has worked to make theirs spartan. Nearly all of Titanium's features are automated, so that they require no user intervention. The main interface contains three basic commands. Scan enables users to perform a Quick Scan, Full Scan, or Custom Scan. The Settings button provides configuration options, such as instructing Titanium to scan the contents of Zip files on your hard drive. The Security Report icon shows how how many viruses, spyware apps, and Web threats have been blocked in the past month, three months, six months, or year. Trend Micro 2011 Dashboard: Like many security platforms, Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus 2011 includes a feature, Web Threats, that aims to keep users safe when surfing the web. Instead of providing information or warnings about malicious sites, however, Trend Micro takes a "Net nanny" approach and blocks dangerous sites completely. (Users have the option of navigating to the site anyway, and Titanium maintains an exceptions list of sites the user deems safe.) As the most basic Trend Micro edition available, Titanium Antivirus+ doesn't support many of the features found in the basic subscription services offered by other programs. For example, McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 contains Shredder, which securely deletes files from a hard drive; the corresponding feature isn't available from Trend Micro unless you upgrade to Titanium Internet Security. In Trend Micro's defense, its current prices for both Titanium Antivirus+ and Titanium Internet Security beat out McAfee's: an Antivirus+ subscription from Trend Micro will only set you back $20. Features Checklist: Anti-Spyware Anti-Rootkit Bot Protection Email Scanning IM Protection Trojan Protection Worm Protection Anti-Phishing 3) Virus Scanner:  3/5 Antivirus+ supports both a Quick Scan and a Full Scan. The Quick Scan looks for viruses in the most common locations on the hard drive. A third type of scan, Custom Scan, lets users specify which physical and mounted drives are examined. On our reference machine, Trend Micro Antivirus+ scanned an average of 10.5MB/second, finishing a 50GB hard-drive in 81 minutes. That makes it significantly slower than industry leaders AVG 2011 and Norton 2011. Quick Scan, however, completed in a downright punctual 14 seconds. Trend Micro Virus Scanner: Updates: In a pop-up that appears when you first launch the Dashboard, Titanium boasts that you will never have to check for manual updates of the software, or updates to the virus definition database. The application is true to its word: the Trend Micro Settings page doesn't even have options for configuring update intervals. Automation, however, doesn't equate to frequency: we found that Antivirus+ only updated its virus definitions an average of 1.3 times per day. 4) Performance Testing:  4.5/10 A good Antivirus program should not only protect your computer from Viruses but also not slow down the Performance of your computer too much by using up your computer's resources. We run each Antivirus program through a set of Performance Tests to see the impact it has on the computer. View the results below of our Antivirus testing for Trend Micro 2011... • Memory Use: Trend Micro 2011 uses 42.2 MB of system memory. #7 rated of the 10 Antivirus programs we tested this year. • Reboot Time: Trend Micro added only 7.2 seconds to our test computer's reboot time. #2 rated program we tested, and just behind the 6.7s of NOD32 Antivirus 4.2. • Installation Size: Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus+ 2011 requires 384 MB of hard-drive space for installation. #9 rated of the 10 Antivirus programs we tested. • Application Launch Time: Trend Micro added 0.393s on average to launch a web browser. This was the #7 rated program we tested. • File Conversion Time: Trend Micro added 0.51s on average to convert a MP3 file to four other file types. #6 rated AV program we tested. • System Impact Score: The "System Impact Score" is a comparative score tallied from the above 5 Antivirus tests. Trend Micro 2011 scored a total of 23 out of 50 points when compared to the other antivirus programs. This placed Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus 2011 as the 6th overall antivirus program in our testing. This is a good improvement over our antivirus test results last year when Trend Micro 2010 only finished 9th overall. 5) Effectiveness: (Virus/Malware Detection)  7/15 The most important function of an Antivirus program is to keep your computer free from Viruses and other Malware. Below we'll take a look at some of the industry's top Virus/Malware Detection testing and certification. a) AV Comparatives is an independent antivirus testing lab in Austria providing some of the most trusted virus detection tests in the industry. They have 2 major virus/malware tests that they perform. In the most recent test, the On Demand Detection Test, Trend Micro was rated 0 out of 3 Stars (a "TESTED" rating due to low scoring). Of the 20 programs tested, only Kingsoft performed worse than Trend Micro in this test, so definitely a miserable failure for Trend. In the 2nd test, the Proactive Test, Trend Micro performed slightly better - receiving a 1-Star rating. Not very encouraging results in these crucial antivirus tests. *Note: Trend Micro pulled their software from the most recent Proactive Test in November due to their belief this test doesn't properly test their Cloud-based technologies. In all, 5 AV vendors boycotted this test including AVG and McAfee.     b) AV-Test is another major antivirus testing lab which is located in Germany. In their recent antivirus testing in 2010, Trend Micro received a 11.5/18 score on the Windows 7 platform. In the 2nd set of tests run on Windows XP, Trend Micro fared better receiving a 13/18 score. This higher score allowed Trend to receive AV-Test's Certification on the 2nd test. Despite these tests being run on Trend's Internet Security software, they are useful when evaluating Trend's more basic Antivirus program since they test the software's Protection and Repair capabilities against Viruses and Malware. Win 7: Win XP:     c) ICSA Labs is an independent organization that sets standards for security products and certifies anti-virus software. Trend was Certified 2 years ago, however this year it isn't certified by ICSA. d) Virus Bulletin's certification is given to antivirus software that detects all viruses "in the wild." Trend FAILED the last 3 tests it was part of (in 2007 and 2008), and has since been dropped from further testing. e) West Coast Labs' Checkmark Anti-Virus Desktop Certification. WCL specializes in functionality testing, performance validation and Checkmark Certification of security products. 6) Help & Support:  3.5/5 Trend Micro makes help available online through the Support link in the upper right corner of the application. Traditional help in the form of a user manual is hard to find; it took us about four clicks to stumble across the closest thing Titanium Antivirus+ has to documentation. Trend Micro encourages users to engage with their automated Troubleshooting system instead. The Troubleshooter fails to offer contacting customer support as an option, however, when the proposed solution fails to fix your problem. If you need to contact live technical support, live support is available by clicking the Do you need further assistance link on the Trend Micro eSupport website's sidebar. Trend Micro has Email and Live Chat services available 24 hours a day from Monday through Friday, and from 8am til 5pm on Saturday and Sunday. Phone Support is available to customers from 5am until 8pm Monday through Friday only; customers also have the option to obtain live 24x7 support by purchasing Trend Micro's Standard Premium Service Plan. »Quick Support Links:      • Trend Micro eSupport Home      • Titanium Antivirus+ Online Manual      • Email, Live Chat, Phone Support      • Premium Support Services (North America) CONCLUSION: Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus+ 2011 boasts a makeover this year with a new name and more emphasis on Cloud-based technologies. However, the same problems plague the new Titanium product line that hampered its predecessor - poor Performance and questionable Effectiveness against viruses. Coupled with a lack of features when compared to its competition, Trend Micro 2011 again only receives a Fair rating from us this year (same as last year). Overall Rating: Fair    (Total Score: 29.5 / 50 = 3 Stars) Misc Info:     • Version Tested: 3.0.1303     • Release Date:     • Review Date:     • Last Updated:     • Previous Version: Trend Micro AntiVirus 2010, Trend Micro AntiVirus 2009