Trend Micro and the FSF

Ever since my subscription to my AV warned me last month for the first time it was going to run out next month, my harddrive has been going through a lot of grinding/seeking and my processor has been running up in the upper percentages, causing me to wait sometimes for my mouse to move and generally being sluggish. I suspected it was my AV, and when I ran Sysinternals procmon, my suspicions were confirmed. I suspected it because it did the same thing last year.

My system wasn't infected, unless you consider blackmailing software for which you paid money for an infection. Some people do, but they also mutter words like "Microsoft" and "Evil Empire." I'm not one of those.

I was considering writing a post about the "cranky software," but was hesitant, because I wanted to make sure it wasn't the anti-spyware software trying to protect me from an intrusion (not likely, but not impossible either.)
The other day, my computer was virtually useless due to the processor usage. After restarting several times, and trying to delete an aborted download of Eclipse, which was difficult to say the least(close to impossible) especially considering the way Trend was eating my processor time (did I mention that there was an inordinate amount of "I/O Other Bytes" showing in task manager? In the gigabyte range which incremented the same time as the AV process did) I finally booted and shutdown windows before Trend could start its maddening "scan" (which wasn't scheduled), so that I could boot a Knoppix Live CD, and used it to delete the file.

Well, when I rebooted again, Lo and Behold, Trend complains that its reverting to the last known good configuration, and my computer's crankiness was gone. Gee.

I still wasn't inclined to write a post about it, but I was considering an email with some venom to Trend. Nevermind the email, I'm doing the post after finding this this morning:
Boycott Trend Micro - Free Software Foundation

Hmm. Suing free software programmers, and doing questionable practices with customers' computers. I had to say something.

By the way, Barracuda Networks distributes the free software antivirus program ClamAV. I've checked it out in the past, and wasn't overly impressed.

I think I like Moon Secure AntiVirus, it installs on all 32bit versions of Windows, its fairly lightweight (low cpu usage) and even does automatic updates, its biggest drawback is the flashy interface you're probably used to isn't there, its just simple and works. You can download it from SourceForge.net from this link, if you need a new AV software or one for your server (yeah, its usable on servers.)