14 DAY TRIAL // It doesn't have to be Friday or the 13th day of the month for something bad to happen, and when we're talking about computers, some things are exactly like in the real life. In this case, I must remind you that it's always better to prevent than to cure, but it's also true that you must have somebody ready to help you with both of these...or something, because we're talking about computers, and an antivirus tool is "something".
Whoops! I revealed my secret! That's life, sometimes you talk too much, and I am still trying to master the art of silence, but probably I'll be silenced forever before getting there...
OK, so we have an antivirus here today. To be more specific, we're having a malware remover that can also provide real time protection, being able to detect, block and clean trojans and keyloggers before they start doing nasty things. Its name is Anti Trojan Elite and its latest version is 3.7.9. Unfortunately, you'll have to pay for using it for cleaning threats and to get a read of the nag screen. The price, 39.95$, is a bit above average, but you'll have to decide if it is worthy or not for you and your computer. Before that, some deeper reviewing is needed, so let's move on!
Anti Trojan Elite's interface balances between very good and really bad, although the things that bother me are problems of detail in most cases, but we're living in a tough world and small details make the difference more often than not. For example, take the nag screen and look at it. I needn't say more.
The text "carved in stone" placed above the menus inside the main window should look special? Well, if that's the intention, it doesn't. Even worse, the fixed size tool tips that appear in the Type area of the Scan menu make this program lose some other points. Just think about "Sensit-ive-Area" or "Flopp-y"! Anyway, if we leave these behind, the interface looks decent and is very easy to use. Now we have some menus to explore, so let's get moving!
The Scan menu allows you to choose the items to scan, including the processes active in the system's memory, which is great. The Scan button can be hard to spot, because its original design and the fact that it's black don't make it a target too easy to spot...
Anti Trojan Elite's next defensive weapon is the real time monitor that checks all programs that you run so they won't hurt your computer, but there's nothing special to setup here. The Monitors menu has only one area, called System, and its purpose is to provide you information about the last item scanned and the status of the monitoring module.
The scan process proved quite slow, but this program is not only designed to scan and protect, but also to optimize and repair, and the items from the Tools menu can take care of that. The tools we have here have basic interfaces and they can help you manage your processes, network connections, and...whoops! The Services monitor is only available after purchasing a license! Well, let's leave it behind and move on...
The System Optimize area has a lot of one-click optimizations but they are not really documented anywhere, so you try them on your own risk...better create a system restore point first! Other interesting areas here are IE Repair, Important Registry Keys, Backup and Scan Log.
The Options available in the Config menu are also pretty basic, but strong enough to be useful, since you can choose scan mode, type, or enable scan of compressed files.
These being said, Anti Trojan Elite can prepare to get back in line, but before that we have to draw the conclusions...
The Good
Anti Trojan Elite is very easy to use and its features can prove quite useful for beginners and advanced users alike.
The Bad
The trial version is too limited, since even the update is disabled, the price is too high, and I say this especially because despite the interesting features I have found here, the Help file is a complete mess, and probably the atomic woodpecker from Mars can understand that kind of English language, because I can't!
The Truth
It's sad to see programs with good ideas behind them suffer from language and interface design problems, because what people see first is the main window, and when a problem arises, they open the Help file. I really hope that the people taking care of the program's documentation and interface study some more books on these topics before moving on further or maybe just change their jobs. Anyway, if you have some time to spare, check out this program, some of its tools can be quite useful, but I wouldn't buy the full version the way it looks and feels in a million years!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
