PROS: No false positives, and passed a wildlist scan with approximately 99%, similar to TrendMicro and Avira.
CONS: BitDefender’s performance issues and long scantimes are something to be aware of.
OVERVIEW: Bitdefender Antivirus Pro 2011 is a commercial security application designed to protect and remove any threats from your computer. Due to performance issues alone, I don’t recommend using this product.
BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011 Review
Company: BitDefender
Supported OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7
Price: 3PCs/1 Year License – $39.95 (Full List @ http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/antivirus.html)
Overall Rating: 4 out of 10
What It Does:
BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011 is designed to protect you from malware, possible identity theft, and to make browsing the internet the safest experience possible with minimal system impact.
Installation:
The installation process took about 20 minutes from start to finish, and only required one reboot.
Details:
I have used BitDefender as my primary commercial virus scanner (when I decided that I needed one) for several years, and never had any issues with it until now.
After running the installer, BitDefender downloaded all the necessary files from the servers for installation. This ensures that the user always has the latest files and definitions installed.
Once the actual installation procedure commences, the user is initially presented with an opt-out EULA.
Above is a screenshot of the aforementioned EULA.
After agreeing to the terms and conditions of the EULA, the BitDefender installer then does a quick check of the system to see if any malware is present that will prevent a complete installation of BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011.
Almost immediately after installing and rebooting, I noticed that the system was rather sluggish and choppy. Initially, I attributed this to the possibility that perhaps all of BitDefender’s modules hadn’t fully initialized, but after 15 minutes of windows choking, I began to have my doubts considering I had more than double the recommended system requirements that were listed on BitDefender’s web page.
It took almost 10 minutes for the scan to initialize, and during that time, system performance slowed to a crawl. Even the mouse pointer started to lag and jump.
At this point, I decided to walk away, do something else, and come back later when I thought the scan would be completed. I expected around 6-8 hours, which was the same for TrendMicro. Getting an actual screenshot past this point in time was next to impossible. When I came back around 8 hours later, the estimated time increased from 6 hours to over 70 hours and less than 1/2 of the scan completed. The only upside to what BitDefender scanned was that there were no false positives, unlike the other Anti-Malware solutions I tested. However, a throttled system that can barely perform basic tasks during a scan such as MSPaint or calc.exe speaks for itself. I tried stopping the scan several times but to no avail. Eventually, I had to restart the machine several times before the system could handle uninstalling BitDefender. There are very few times I’ve run into a problem such as this, and none of them involved Anti-Malware solutions.
Ease Of Use:
While BitDefender’s interface was easy to use and designed for most users, the actual performance of BitDefender left a lot to be desired.
Summary:
Scantimes were unreasonably long (30+ hours for a full system scan) compared to other tested solutions. Normally, I’ve used BitDefender’s earlier products without problem for several years, but BitDefender has clearly dropped the ball on this one. Even after trying to stop the scan after the first eight hours, it kept resuming, regardless of what button(s) I pushed. I had to physically restart the machine several times before the uninstaller would actually do what it’s supposed to do the first time around. I’m not trying to be mean, but unless some major changes are made that don’t consume system resources as they did this time around, I would not recommend this product as a viable security solution.
