by Dave Reeder
12. January 2010 02:18
I just wanted to make a quick post about Bitdefender Total Security 2010 now that I have been using it for a couple of weeks. I am happy to say it seems to be working very well on Windows XP and has cleared up a couple of suspicious files already! The Bitdefender suite also comes with some nice "tune up" tools to restore any lost performance of your PC including defragment, removal of duplicate files, Registry cleaner etc.
Performance wise it seems very good. The Bitdefender Total Security 2010 package allows you to protect 3 PCs for a year. So far we have tried it on two and found it to work very well alongside all our other software. There was one small gripe on one PC - The Phishing filter (on the Bitdefender toolbar) seemed to affect browser performance a lot so we opted to turn it off, whereas on the other PC it doesn't seem to matter. This latter PC has twice the RAM so perhaps it is a RAM issue?
If you are into gaming, you can switch Bitdefender into "Game Mode" which will stop it interfering with your game and then add the game to the safe list so you don't have to keep switching it to Game Mode every time you play that game. I can testify that this works well on Battlefield 2 and Left 4 Dead 2.
When I first installed Bitdefender and restarted my PC, it completely locked up when booting into Windows meaning I couldn't do anything. However, I then re-checked the instructions and noticed that it said you should uninstall any other anti-virus software before you install Bitdefender. After doing this it has been fine.
I read on a website that some people had found this issue and then re-installed Windows! This is not necessary as you can do a System Restore (press F8 when your PC is rebooting) and I recommend that anyone create a fresh "Restore Point" before you install any software such as anti-virus software as it is possible for things to go wrong!
Overall I would say Bitdefender is very good so far, which is a good thing as it certainly gets good reviews! Cost wise it was reasonably priced and it will be interesting to see how much they charge for renewal this year.