BitDefender Antivirus 2010 Assessment - By: Eddie

Antivirus Installation:

Download time after direct purchase was only about 1 minute. After that, a standard installation wizard will walk you through each step needed to complete the installation.

During the installation, you'll have the opportunity to choose one of the following profiles:

Typical
Gamer
Parent
Custom

Each profile has different pre-sets that will help you according to your needs.

If you have other BitDefender products installed on a home network, the installation will offer settings that allow you manage them from one location. Very, very handy.

If you're on a laptop, the installation setup will install features that help to regulate battery power.

Antivirus definition updates will be automatically downloaded during the installation process.

Total install only took approximately 5 minutes.

The overall installation experience for BitDefender may be a little different than other installations, but the different options tend to be very useful and a nice improvement.

BitDefender will ask if you'd like to do a reboot or not, but you'll need to do a reboot anyway in order for the software to work properly (we're not sure why they bother to give you an option).

Un-installation:

If you ever need to uninstall BitDefender, it's easy. You can either uninstall through the Windows ADD/REMOVE Programs feature, or through BitDefender's self-uninstall.

It takes about 2 minutes to complete the un-installation, and a reboot is required.

All related files were cleanly removed, and we didn't find any problematic traces left behind in the registry.

User Interface:
The user interface control panel has a very clean and modern look without being confusing or overwhelming.

With ever increasing needs for custom antivirus settings, BitDefender, as many other manufacturers have done, has wisely split the user interface into 3 distinct sections for you to choose from: Novice, Intermediate, or Expert.

The Novice interface is easy enough to simply set-it and forget-it.

The Intermediate interface guides you through several wizards that allow you to customize which settings will work best for you.

The Expert interface uses a tab-based format that allows for easy access to all settings.

Overall, the 3 separate interface options provide a user interface appropriate for any user level.

Real-time Protection:

BitDefender's real-time protection proved accurate and quick to respond.

Of all the viruses and malware we tested against it, and we tested a lot, BitDefender Antivirus detected 90%. A terrific score considering no antivirus software is ever 100% accurate.

When real-time protection was engaged, memory usage was less than 5MB. Memory usage only slightly increased when the antivirus had to deal with a malicious file.

When BitDefender detects a virus, unlike some competitors, it does so instant they attempt to transfer to your PC.

When a file attempts to transfer to your computer, an alert appears in the System tray describing the virus threat.

Overall, a great real-time protection result.

Manual Scan:

90% of all viruses and malware were detected by BitDefender when we ran a manual, full-system scan.

Even though the scan took a bit longer than some of the other antivirus software we tested, for most people accurate results are worth the wait.

Resource Usage:

Memory usage was approximately 3% during real-time usage (very low).

A full-system manual scan only used 82% of CPU during our testing. Memory usage started around 90MB and slowly increased to 110MB after 12 min of scanning. Not bad.

No noticeable computer lag-time was detected during scanning. Our browsers responded normally without much delay.

Resource usage overall was very low. At 3% memory usage, BitDefender comes in second only to VIPRE this year.

Spyware/Adware Protection:

BitDefender only removed 75% of the spyware and adware we tested.

Even though this may not seem like a great score, it's still much better than most other antivirus software we've tested this year (note: the remaining software that BitDefender was unable to remove was also not removed by most competitors either.)

There were a few programs that couldn't be removed during our testing. BitDefender detected them, but automatic final deletion wasn't possible.

However, the most dangerous and annoying spyware/adware was all successfully removed.

Overall, a decent anti-spyware and anti-adware, but we hope BitDefender will perform better next year.

Virus Removal from a Pre-infected Machine:

We pre-infected our testing computer with viruses and other malicious software, then installed BitDefender to see how well it would perform.

During installation, the antivirus only caught about 20% of the already installed viruses, and it didn't identify the dormant malware that had not yet installed itself.

Once we ran a full-system scan, 90% of all viruses were caught and deleted. Running a full-system scan is always recommended after installing antivirus software, regardless of who the security software vendor is, to ensure that all viruses and malware are found and removed.

Even though BitDefender didn't do as well as we'd like to see in virus detection on a machine that was already infected, we still give them a high score because once we ran a manual scan, the viruses were detected and removed.

Overall, a decent anti-spyware and anti-adware, but we hope BitDefender will perform better next year.

Email Protection:

This antivirus version doesn't include a direct email protection feature (you'll need to upgrade to BitDefender Internet Security 2010), but all files and programs attempting to access your computer are all equally scanned anyway.

Whether these malicious files come via the web or email, as long as you have real-time protection enabled, your inbox is protected.

IM Protection:

Even though BitDefender doesn't specifically list Instant Messaging (IM) protection as a feature, all URLs and links that pass through IM conversations are still scanned for viruses or phishing (Live/MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger only) as long as Real-Time protection is enabled.

Thus, even though it's not listed as a feature per se, we still give them high marks for having the functionality and for it working well at preventing viruses.

Antivirus Definition Updates:

The default setting for antivirus definition updates is one hour, which really should be fine for most people, but you can change this frequency in Expert mode.

You can also change the alerts to be completely silent, which we don't recommend, or you can even set combinations of alerts/prompts when downloading or installing updates.

BitDefender Antivirus 2010
Review Conclusions:

BitDefender Antivirus 2010 performed extremely well in almost all areas of our antivirus testing this year.

They've proven to have an excellent track record year after year, and we're glad to see BitDefender continues to live up to expectations as Internet security software.

This year keeps up the pace with excellent real-time protection to keep your PC safe 24/7.

Viruses and other malware were successfully scanned and dealt with.

IM and email messages are thoroughly scanned for phishing or potential threats.

The clever use of a three-sectioned user interface is a nice addition this year, making it easier to use for any user: novice, intermediate, or expert.

Resource usage is always a big concern for antivirus users, and BitDefender Antivirus 2010 does a great job this year by keeping the overall footprint low.

The only area that needs some attention is their spyware and adware protection. Our tests showed it to be acceptable, but it has room to improve.

Add to all this a very reasonable price tag, and BitDefender is a great choice for core antivirus PC protection.

BitDefender Antivirus 2010. Click Here

About the Author

BitDefender is one of the fastest growing manufacturer and provider of antivirus solutions in Europe.

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