Q: What anti-virus software should I use?

– Submitted by many

A: My philosophy on anti-virus software is that it should be as unintrusive as possible to the user and have as little impact as possible on the performance of the computer. Many anti-virus softwares annoy their users with frequent warnings and bog down the computers they run on because they require excessive amounts of RAM and other system resources.

Given this criteria, I recommend Trend Micro Internet Security. I have found that this software is the least intrusive software of the 3 major anti-virus softwares (Norton and McAfee being the other two). Year after year, Trend Micro Internet Security also seems to require fewer system resources than the other softwares, resulting in much less impact on system performance. If you have a business with 5 or more computers, I also recommend Trend Micro’s Client/Server Security Suite, which is their software for businesses.

One other very nice feature of this software is that they make it very easy to stay current. While other softwares make pricing distinctions between “upgrading” and “re-subscribing”, Trend Micro only charges for yearly subscriptions. As long as a user is current, they can upgrade to the latest Trend Micro version at any time.

While the 2007 version of Trend Micro Internet Security required quite a bit more RAM than I would have liked, the recently released 2008 version returns to form with a much slimmer RAM footprint. Combined with the other improvements to the 2008 version, I am highly recommending that all my clients upgrade to this version.

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