Many may already be aware of Trend Mirco’s Housecall service. The website is one of the oldest free online scanners around and has provided excellent virus detection and removal. I personally have been using Housecall for several years to scan all my PC’s online. However, utilizing the service always required going to the Trend Micro website first and scanning through the browser. Trend Micro has just released Housecall 7.0 which is now downloadable and able to run as a standalone free antivirus on one’s computer.
Trend Micro has released two versions of HouseCall a 32 bit and a 64 bit version. The installation of the program was seamless (the download size was only 2.15 megabytes). However, note that HouseCall does not install itself into the start menu or the desktop. One will have to click the exe every time to launch.
HouseCall 7.0 adds two new features in addition to being downloadable. They are the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network capability, a quarantine, and several scanning options. The Smart Protection Network provides defense against zero day threats. The protection utilizes cloud servers provided by Trend Micro to protect against malware immediately after they are released on the internet. Therefore HouseCall 7.0 has similar functionality to Panda Cloud Antivirus. Next, HouseCall 7.0 adds a “Previous Scan” option or quarantine. Here a user can restore a file that may have been detected as a false positive or let it be automatically deleted. Finally, HouseCall 7.0 offers three scanning options. One can opt for the quick scan, full scan, or the custom scan.
During a full system scan, HouseCall 7.0 uses about 95 megabytes of RAM and up to 6% CPU power. These numbers are higher than most free antivirus and even ones with real time shields. Housecall 7.0 scans at an excellent 6 megabytes per second. The higher scanning speeds are evident by Trend Micro’s more mature scanning engine. Housecall 7.0 also displays the current file that is being scanned, an elapsed time, and a percent completion.
Housecall 7.0 also downloads the latest updates upon every time the program is launched via the executable.
