The Japanese internet security company Trend Micro is probably best known for its PC-Cillin line of security software, often supplied free with new computers.

The company concentrates on network and server protection for large companies, but it also sells its own home anti-virus software, which has the full title Trend Antivirus plus Antispyware 2007.

It’s not a complete internet security suite, because it doesn’t include firewall or anti-spam components, but if you are using the firewall and anti-spam options in Windows XP, this may allow you to avoid duplication of these components.

Installation is straightforward, and apart from forcing users to register, and an initial scan of the computer, there’s little to do, as most things the software does go on in the background. Four separate scans are scheduled by default, though it's possible to change the time, date and frequency of each using the control panel. The scans cover viruses, spyware, vulnerabilities of Windows and a general check-up.

Scanning is not particularly quick: a test search of 127,000 files took 53 minutes on our standard computer, but it did pick up a couple of tracking cookies and one unpleasant piece of spyware, which it offered to remove or leave untouched.

The Trend Micro website claims the program can perform a one-click privacy clean-up, getting rid of all your browsing history, temporary internet files and cookies. It also says this kind of clean-up can be set on a schedule to happen automatically, but we couldn’t find either feature in the software or in its help screens.

Details of new viruses and spyware are downloaded automatically every three hours by default, so the software should be able to protect against fresh outbreaks as well as random occurrences of existing viruses (it’s in the period just after a new virus breaks out that anti-virus software is most vulnerable, because it takes time for the lab to create an antidote).

Trend deals with this by issuing warnings to its customers as soon as new outbreaks are detected, and supplying the latest fixes automatically. However, it doesn’t claim to use heuristic protection, like many of the big-name anti-virus programs, so it's possible that Trend users could be left unprotected for short periods.

In all, though, this is a reasonably priced program for those who just need basic anti-virus protection.

Vista compatible: Yes