Once you download the free trial package, you will get a dialog box showing the following message:

“You are going to download the Best antivirus solution”.

 #1 security software in the world

This message as I believe should be reformed in a different way such as “one of the best Antivirus Solutions”, since there are several points that are negatively marking BitDefender with negative crosses.

During the installation process:

 

Good:

 

1. It starts by uninstalling the existing antivirus solution by popping up the uninstall dialog box. Some users might forget to take action in to this step; they might then get into troubles having two antivirus solutions in the same PC.

 

2. During installation process if the Internet connectivity goes off/on alternatively, then the installation dialog box will pause then detect the new connection again then reconnect and continue without any failures, some other package may stop, or quit or even hung up.

 

 

Bad:

 

1. The installer batch file is very small (2.2MB), incase of internet connection failure the online installation period is a critical period to the operating system. Most powerful Antivirus applications installs every thing as one batch; leading to full capability of protection except the latest updates are still to be added to the installed batch, including the newest antivirus definitions.

 

2. In the license agreement step, there is no chance to enlarge or resize or even copy the license text to some other text editing application to help read the context at the preferred font size for any user; some users may like to read it clearly then decide whether to agree or disagree it.  Some license agreements may indirectly include violation tolerance to the privacy of the user or may admit non responsibility of any failures to the privacy violation caused by any reason; this point of course implies lots of questions against the agreement policy.

 

After Installation:

 

Good:

 

1. It has an autopilot proactive mode, through which 4 major missions are offered, Antivirus, Privacy, Update, and Network Map. Each of these four options has its own options; all are working smartly towards the user’s safety.

 

2. There are no bugging dialog boxes or pop up screens prompting user frequently on screen as experienced by some other applications. BitDefender by default offers a silent update mode, while other options are still available for users who like them to be set either such as prompt before downloading and prompt before installing. 

 

Bad:

 

1. Scanning USB or external drives is not enabled by default; this option is available but it should be done manually from the advanced option in the BitDefender Tools and Options Window.

 

This option is some how very important as most users are using USB flash drives, once the system is down with flash drive being attached to the PC, then the PC might boot from that drive with some external infections. An infected flash drive will lead to catastrophic damages in some cases of successful “Boot for external drives “options are enabled at the BIOS. Therefore USB scan option should have been enabled by default.

 

2. BitDefender scanning performs poorly on legacy USB-1 flash drive with Zip files, It took 7.15 minutes to scan check 5 zip files and one folder of 70.2 MB size, while it scan checked a non zipped folder size 7.14GB on USB2, USB3 flash disk in one minute.

 

The following dialogs illustrate the problem clearly. Figure-1 illustrate the needed time for scanning a 70.2MB folder containing Zip files.

 

3. The scan summary does not show the elapsed time. But still any user can roughly calculate it if he/she is a ware of the starting time of the scan process, they can make use of the end time shown in the show log option located down the summary dialog box shown after scanning, it will show up the end time of the scan process.

 

Options offered by the Package

 

Some of the offered options are disabled by default, such as Search Advisor and Scan SSL; the user should pay attention to set all necessary options in accordance with their needs.

 

Good:

 

1. Antivirus: variety of options to be set by the user, some of them are already set by default.

a. Shield

b. Vulnerability Monitor

c. Exclusion 

d. Quarantine

 

2. Privacy Control: these options are to be set as ON/OFF as required

a. Toolbar Functions

b. Protection for Web Browsers

 

3. Network Map: it sketches the PC’s around in the network, along with its sharing options. 

 

4. Update: offers three options of updates, Silent, Prompt for downloading, prompt for Installation.

 

Bad:

 

1. There is no way to reset the options to its defaults causing the user to be confused which options has been set and which were originally set by the software once it has been installed.

 

Conclusion:

 

BitDefender is one of the advanced Antivirus Solutions available among variety of other group of its grade level applications. Which is precisely tailored to offer the user; a quality set of services towards better healthy and safe working environment. Frequently updated automatically and it will take the proper action smartly and smoothly.

 

 

         Figure-1: BitDefender Scan Test on USB-1 Flash disk 7.15 minutes to scan 70.2MB 

 

Although still it has some minor performance bottlenecks as previously mentioned in the Bad sections as explained before. Generally it can be considered to be an excellent highly perfuming professional Antivirus Solution for Windows.