Trend PC-cillin 2002 By Larry J. Seltzer June 11, 2002

• Product: Trend PC-cillin 2002
• Direct Price: With one-year subscription, $39.95 direct
• Company Info: Trend Micro Inc., www.antivirus.com

Editor Rating:

Trend PC-cillin 2002 has a cool name and some distinctive features. Unfortunately, it distinguished itself on our tests with a large number of problems. We have no reason to distrust the program's ability to detect viruses (though it was overeager at times, reporting two false positives), but this latest version just doesn't seem ready for prime time.

Unfortunately, we had problems during testing; our systems crashed frequently when running our Content Creation Winstone tests because of an incompatibility with Netscape 6.0.1, one of the applications used in the benchmark tests.

Other issues were less significant but contributed to our impression that this latest version isn't quite finished. The System Status screen, for example, lists information under "Virus detected since PC-cillin on guard." This screen, however, displayed "No" long after the product had detected numerous viruses in e-mail and on the hard drive.

The help system and manual were misleading at times. They stated that "out of the box," PC-cillin would protect against malicious ActiveX controls and Java applets, a reference to the Web Trap feature. In fact, this feature is disabled by default. The help system also gives instructions on how to create boot floppy disks but fails to mention that in Windows XP this feature is not installed.

Still, PC-cillin has some strong points. It was the fastest product on our scanning tests. Like Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2002, it supports live antivirus updates even if the user is not logged on as an administrator. PC-cillin comes with a personal firewall and has the ability to block specific Internet addresses. And Trend Micro is one of the few companies that still provide phone support with the standard product.

By default, PC-cillin is set to look for antivirus and firewall updates every 10 minutes, ensuring that users will get updates as soon as possible. Options let us easily restrict the times of day when the product should check for updates. And for those rare events when the user thinks a virus has slipped through, a unique feature, the Emergency Lock, lets you quickly but temporarily block all Internet traffic.

We also like PC-cillin's interface, which has both simple and detailed versions. The simple version displays status, performs a manual update, and scans all drives. The standard interface lets you do much more, such as viewing logs and specifying detailed scans. The Settings dialog, in yet another window, is fairly straightforward. But task scheduling, a well-designed feature that should be made more prominent, is hidden deep in the settings dialog.