Technical Tidbits

MICE Training & Technology is announcing formally our decision to remove ourselves from Partnership with Trend Micro and Symantec products. Although we’ve never done much with our partner sites anyway!

Here’s the first part of our decision….

In both partner plans, you have to purchase the CDs or skew products from a distributor. Our customers and clients don’t do that. We no longer go on site and install this stuff. Our customers and clients download their software.

Hello? Symantec and Trend? This IS the 21st Century!

Secondly, we can no longer support their products because they suck. Or as my sister puts it, “They suck pond water.”

Which is the second and final reason we stopped supporting and recommending them.

As many of you old timers know, we’ve given you unlimited support (unlike Symantec’s support site) for which we’ve never been paid. It’s become too costly to support Symantec and Trend without payment. And to be honest, we don’t want you to pay us to support their products because we don’t want you to buy them!

Symantec’s Norton Antivirus is so top heavy it eats up your resources and slows your PC to a slow crawl. Now I don’t know if it does that on the newer Vista capable machines, and frankly I don’t care. Because if Symantec doesn’t slow you down, I’m sure Microsoft will!

TrendMicro’s Internet Security 2006 was a god-send after dealing with Symantec/Norton’s AV. It ran well and fast. You never noticed it was there.

But alas, Trend must’ve grown up and grown big because their software went down the drain with 2007. I know that if you read my previous post in the repairs section that TrendMicro will slow down if you don’t undo the immunize function in Spybot, but I’ve done a clean install on a PC that NEVER ran Spybot and Trend PC-cillin 2007 degraded over time.

The minute I closed it down and disabled the running services in the management console, the PC sped up so fast I sat there with my mouth hanging open in shock. I could NOT believe it! The difference was unbelievable. (And I have a very fast running client who’s very happy and will back-up my claims here!)

So, if you have a PC that’s running Symantec or Trend Micro products, uninstall baby! You’d be surprised how fast your PC really is!

What do we recommend? Grab AVAST free Home or professional version. Right now, they are the best on our list for AV software. (And we are joining their affiliate program!)

AVG is okay, but the free version is extremely annoying. The coverage is great, but I really prefer the interface with AVAST. Even in the free version. But be warned! It talks to you! I mean in an audible voice when it updates or traps a suspicious message. The first time it scared the heck out of me!

Firewall Software? ZoneAlarm. They’ve recovered from their crappier versions and the newer ones work well. Either way, it’s better than M$ Firewall! (Ok, never mind that comment. ANYTHING is better than M$ firewall!)

And yes, we’ve joined ZoneAlarms affiliate program also! For now.

Stay safe, Debbie

written by Admin \\ tags: computer slow, internet security, norton, norton antivirus, pc-cillin, slow pc, symantec, trend, trendmicro

There is a lot of grumbling from people all over the net (and in my own family) about how slow TrendMicro Internet Security 2007 is. So much so, that Trend has been made aware of the problem and posted a fix to the problem.

First, you have to have version 15.30.xxxx of Trend. If you don’t, you have to upgrade by getting the upgrade kit here:

http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/tis/PCC2007_UPGKT_153_1128_1151_GM.exe

(Source and Directions for use:
http://esupport.trendmicro.com/support/viewxml.do?ContentID=1034407)

The trouble is that the slow computer had Spybot S&D installed on it before upgrading to Trend IS 2007. The new Trend makes you uninstall Spybot. Unfortunately, what they don’t tell you is, that before you uninstall, you need to remove the host files (if you had installed them through advanced mode), AND you MUST UNDO THE IMMUNIZE! That’s the biggie!

When Trend installs, it attempts to monitor all your program files. Even though Spybot has been unistalled, the immunized files are still being protected or locked down by Spybot (which of course, no longer exists on your computer!). So, there is this huge battle going on in the background between Trend and locked down Spybot files. This is what consumes the resourses!

So, if you are using Trend 2007 and your computer is getting slower than molassis, reinstall Spybot, update it, and then UNIMMUNIZE your files. (There’s an UNDO button under the immunize section.)

I’ve done this with many, many clients now, and they are faster than a speeding bullet. (Oh, wait! That’s Superman, isn’t it? GRIN) Anyway, you get the drift!

Support Source:

http://esupport.trendmicro.com/support/viewxml.do?ContentID=EN-1033903

Debbie

written by Admin \\ tags: computer slow, internet security, pc-cillin, slow pc, trend, trendmicro