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21 November 2011

Why does BitDefender slow down my PC?

We've been asked this question a few times just recently, especially by customers with older systems. The crux of the problem is that the virus/malware/phishing threat is greater than it was last year and far, far greater than it was just a few years ago.

There are some elements of our world which are not at all pleasant and the Internet is just an electronic reflection of our society. The exponential growth in virus/malware/phishing threats continues to be a headache for us all. Long gone are the days when viruses were the creation of spotty teenagers who were just out for the notoriety of it all. Today's threats all have criminal intent, and we're not taking about petty criminals either; cybercrime is big business. And it's organised.

To combat this increased threat, AV programs have to do more. Most of our customers were previously using Kaspersky IS 2009. As it was three years behind the current offering, the weakness of this outdated version were starting to become apparent: some customer's PC had been compromised because of inadequate protection. Move on 3 years and the protection is now much better matched to the threat, but that added protection comes at the cost of performance and this performance hit is far more noticeable on older hardware. i.e. more than 4 years old.

We go to great lengths to determine the best AV product for our customers; all of the AV products have issues, all of the latest versions demand more from your PC; as we've always said, we just aim to pick the 'best of a bad bunch'. Currently we think that accolade goes to BitDefender Internet Security 2012. This recommendation is based on our research and experiences, and our conclusion  it's backed by several independent reviews, however you are, of course, free to install whatever AV product you wish on your PCs. You may be lucky but if you're not we'll always be here to sort out the mess!

On a more helpful note there are things that you can do to help alievate the problem and improve the perfomance of your PC, here are our top tips (in no particular order).

If none of the above helps, and your PC is more than 4 years old, it may well be time to consider replacing it! And if that leaves you just the teeniest bit enraged, I emphasise with you, so please don't shoot the messenger!

*See 13 October article, below.

19 October 2011

Antivirus latest

We've had a very busy week! On top of our normal work-load we've been doing some more extensive testing of BitDefender Internet Security 2012 both here in the office and a few customer installs. All appears well so far!

We've created new illustrated instructions for installing BitDefender IS 2012: the're under the 'Instructions' menu to the left of this page. Also, to help our customers to verify that their computers meets the BitDefender IS 2012 minimum system requirements we've created a handy utility which you can download and run: BD-PreInstallCheck.hta (please ignore the "Unknown Publisher" warnings).

Finally a reminder that if you bought a BitDefender IS 2011 key from us you will be able to use that key with BitDefender IS 2012. To upgrade just follow our BitDefender Installation instuctions.

13 October 2011

Antivirus Update 

This is an update to the "Antivirus All Change!" article below.

Antivirus vendors release "New & Improved" (sic) products every year, mainly to compete with each other, and so most products have a year postfix e.g. 'BitDefender Internet Security 2011'. This is all very well but there seems to be an increasing trend to release next years product earlier and earlier in the year before! 

We tested BitDefender Internet Security 2011 from June through to August in order to determine is suitability for our customers. We then produced detailed update instructions for the benefit of our customers and bought stock. For the sake of continuity we planned to use and supply the BitDefender 2011 product until at least the early part of 2012.

That was the plan.

Yesterday that plan was somewhat thwarted, or, more accurately, completely trashed as a result of marketing and consumer brain washing. Apparently we have all come to believe that the newest products are always the best. Sad really, because in the Computer world they seldom are!

We attempted to buy stock of BitDefender IS 2011 yesterday from our suppliers only to be told that since the release of BitDefender 2012 products in September(!!), sales of 2011 products had sharply declined and so they had taken the decision to return all their 2011 stock back to BitDefender.

As the saying goes 'every cloud has a silver lining' and, as it happens, this couldn't be more so than in this case... Yesterday, with some apprehension, I installed BitDefender IS 2012 on a five year old Notebook we had in the office, to give it a brief evaluation. After a somewhat shaky start - I had to update the installed Windows XP SP2 to SP3 - the experience turned out far better than I expected (I'm intrinsically sceptical!). The two biggest gripes we have had from customers regarding BitDefender IS 2011 - complexity of installation process and systems slowing down - seem to have been addressed and first impressions have been very positive.

Good points:

Bad points:

 

BitDefender Internet Security 2012 minimum system requirements are:

It also requires Internet Explorer v7 or higher.

PCs bought in the last 4 years or so should meet these requirements; older system will most probably need a memory upgrade and may need updating to the latest Microsoft Sevice pack. To help our customers to verify that their computers meets the BitDefender Internet Security 2012 minimum system requirements we have created a handy utility which you can download and run: BD-PreInstallCheck.hta (please ignore the "Unknown Publisher" warnings). 

26 Sept 2011

At around 1415 today, our service provider experienced a loss of connectivity to the datacentre housing our main server. This was resolved by 1615 but re-occurred for a few hours hour in the evening.

Our server remained running correctly, but lost all external connectivity.

Emails will have experienced a delay but should not have been lost.

This is the first outage we've experienced in over 2¼ years, giving us an uptime of 99.99% !!

September 2011

Antivirus All Change!

As you may be aware we continually monitor the performance of Antivirus products available from the various vendors and measure them against our main criteria of Best overall protection, Ease of use and Cost. As we have always stated, no one product stands out head and shoulders above the rest; it is just a case of selecting the "best of a bad bunch" at any particular point in time. We also have to balance our reviews and recommendations against the advantage of continuity in staying with one particular product in terms of familiarity and support.

For some time now the top two contenders have been BitDefender and Kaspersky, with very little difference between them when measured against the above criteria however in recent months BitDefender has continually been rated ahead of Kaspersky in various industry reviews. At a local level we have experienced some usability problems with Kaspersky Internet Security 2011, particularly with it's persistence in preventing our backup solution running for several customers: Despite adding the Drive Snapshot software to Kaspersky's "Trusted" group, periodically Kaspersky seems to 'forget' that Snapshot is trusted and prevents Drive Snapshot from running or moves it into quarantine! As backup is a critically important process - our 'soapbox' topic; I'm sure you've all heard our warnings that your hard disk will fail at some stage, it's only a question of when - anything that is detrimental to the backup process must be treated seriously.

In the context of the above we have recently re-evaluated BitDefender Internet Security 2011 in a live set-up on a couple of system here in our office. The trial has demonstrated that BitDefender Internet Security does not interfere with the backup process and generally appears to be less obtrusive than Kaspersky in use, although the Outlook/Outlook Express plug-in produces a tool-bar that has 9 buttons rather than the 3 provided with Kaspersky!

The conclusion from our trial is that when judged by the criteria mentioned above, BitDefender Internet Security appears to have an advantage over Kaspersky Internet Security at the present time. We have therefore decided to recommend and supply BitDefender for new installations and renewals when they become due.

If you have recently updated your Kaspersky Internet Security then generally speaking there is no desperately compelling reason to update to BitDefender until the expiry date of your Kaspersky product. However if you feel you must upgrade now and have bought a Kaspersky licence from us since 1 June 2011 then you can buy BitDefender at a 50% discount against our normal selling price. Please just ask!

And finally, the good news is that BitDefender products are less expensive than their Kaspersky counterparts: A BitDefender Internet Security 2011 licence is £4 + VAT less than Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 and a 3 user licence is £6+ VAT cheaper. As always, we endevour to maintain a competitive price edge, e.g. our price for a BitDefender Internet Security single user, 12 month licence is 4% cheaper than buying directly from BitDefender's online store!

 

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