Customer Reviews

BitDefender Antivirus 2008 - 2 Year/3 Pc's

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I compared several major name and lesser know virus protectors prior to choosing to purchase this one. Those I settled purchasing were Kaspersky Anti-Virus and BidDefender Anti-virus. Both products performed better then anything I tested or evaluated from the big name companies and having worked in tech support; I am very careful about checking to be sure that my protection software does not prevent me from working. Historically, Norton and McAfee were system resource hogs.

In general, Kapspersky is a more elegant and somewhat superior product to BitDefender and they are known for pretty good tech support (considering the company is in in Russia). Kapspersky will run in the background so that you can use your computer and do a virus check at the same time and it is very aggressive - (If you purchase it or use the free trial I strongly recommend that you leave the install settings at the general user level - otherwise it will prompt you every time you do something - I accidently set mine to block MS Windows auto-update which resulted in a pop-up warning war on my machine). I chose to not purchase Kapspersky because it was highly expensive - even on Amazon compared to the other products.

Bit defender on the other hand was a quite good product (if a little bit more technical and slightly less aggressive - it will use more resources then Kapspersky and I can hear my drive clicking while I am writing this). They are not known for good or timely technical support - I think they are a reasonably small company out of Hungary and may have few English speakers on staff. It will slow your computer down during normal operation, but is a faster install and first-run full (deep) system scan then most of the competitors. The best part is the price (if you have more then one computer - you can get two years on three computers for 29.95 - list price 39.95(Kapspersky is $34.25 at Amazon - list price 59.95 for one computer for one year).

Do not expect technical support from Bitdefender, your experience will not be pleasant; this product is, after all, a virus protector - I personally do not want to be calling tech support, I want to be protected. Also, when you do the install, just do the standard or average person install; the directions for expert and advanced features are confusing and may even be misleading.

One major issue I noticed is that the software often tells you it is unlicensed even when it is. This appears to have no effect on the running or performance of the product, the auto updates, or the protection of your system - everything runs just fine and the product is licensed and operating - this was likely to have resulted from a minor programming error at the company that somehow got into the production version of the software. If you just ignore the bitdefender icon showing that the software is not working, it will run and protect you just fine.

Do NOT install any virus checker on a computer until you have made sure every other virus checker has been removed and uninstalled; for windows Vista users this may include disabling Windows Defender - they "fight" with each other and eat your system's resources.

Lastly: I am not recommending this product for Windows Vista Users, there seems to be an issue with Windows Defender and some virus protection suites.

Bought Bitdefender last fall and ran well until upgrade time. Then without notice Bitdefender turned off my Bit defender-contacted support- they said to re register- did and it worked. Next I was notified that my Bit defender had expired and I needed to up-grade, I had 580 days left on my license. I installed the new version of Bitdefender 2008 and tried to make it work, nothing on it worked. I had followed instructions provided in Bitdefender e-mail step for step. Contacted support and was instructe to perform certin steps, gather files, dump screen pictures and so on. Most of these steps could only be performed by a computer nerd- way above my capability. Contacted bit defender sales who responded quickly with a new registration key and said it would work now. Tried to reinstall 2008 upgrade and Bitdefender said that I did not have the authority on my own computer to install Bitdefender. I gave up and am now waiting for Kaspersky 7. This whole experiance with Bitdefender seems surreal and unbelivable at the arrogance and computer nurdishness displayed by that organization.

BitDefender AV 10 was a plugger, effective at singling out the bad guys but inclined to hog the machine from time to time, generally slowing performance. BitDefender AV 2008 solves those problems, providing much crisper operation. It has an improved display of current status but still lacks buttons to pause and resume scanning, partial scan with memory, and scan scheduling. We bought a 5/2 AV 10 package at considerably more than the twice the price of the 3/2 AV 2008 package now offered by Amazon, but considering the free upgrade that was provided still feel we got our money's worth. The current price is a bargain.

Thankful I am that Amazon stands behind their products, as they are sending me a replacement copy of BitDefender Antivirus 2008. Hopefully, I just received a faulty copy and the new one will work. The one I had froze my computer at the end of the download. I manually removed the CD, rebooted and it appeared to be installed. Took me through the registration process, showed in my programs, but when I ran it, after 20 minutes of scanning, computer froze, then shut down with a "fatal error" warning.

Don't even bother trying to contact BitDefender except through the "live chat" at their website. After the chat I received an email with instructions to send them a copy of the scan log. I sent screen shot of the frozen screen and the scan log which showed aborted scan. No reply from BitDefender, so I emailed them 2 more times before giving up.

I uninstalled the program, then reinstalled. Same thing -- computer froze at end of install, appeared to be installed at reboot, froze computer during scan, computer shut down with fatal error warning...

I filled out the return info at Amazon, and instantly was sent instructions on how to return the product, with a shipping notice of replacement being sent.

Hoping for better results next time, but at this point I could not recommend BitDefender Antivirus 2008 to anyone.

This is on a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad T61 with Windows XP Pro.

Product has found many viruses and automated general system maintenance. Product support is very poor... ranging from 2 day response to 2 month response. Price is very good.

I installed this product on three different machines (all running WinXP), two desktops and one laptop. The laptop stopped spinning down the disk and my battery life dropped significantly. After a month of discussions with support, I finally gave up and suffered with the reduced battery life. On the desktops, it worked pretty well until one day my wife's computer would go 100% CPU on boot -- after a lot of pain, we finally found it was the bitdefender svchosts.ext process. I uninstalled it and the problem immediately went away... Sure enough, a few weeks later, the same thing happened to my desktop. Oddly enough, it took the laptop several months before the svchosts.exe problem happening, but eventually it did. I have given up trying to make this product work and moved to a different solution... Thank goodness it was cheap, but I guess you get what you pay for.

bitdefender antivirus software is far superior to Norton, Trend Micro, or McAfee. You can actually speak with a technician 24/7 via live chat and have your issue/problem resolved immediately. My experiences with the other three antivirus software companies has been that of frustration and short of being obnoxious when requesting help via Live Chat. The only company that I recommend to anyone like myself (a novice) when it comes to computers is bitdefender. You will never have to change antivirus software again.

This Antivirus system will not always perform properly with Vista. 24/7 tech support is virtually non-existant and is apparently based in Romania.
The Support agents will pretend they can't hear you (if using the 1-888 number) or will disconnect (when using the internet chat based sessions) when they cannot figure out your problem. They are also rude, and this leads me to believe they are aware of the Vista Incompatibility. The "No questions asked" refund is impossible to collect on, and they are trained to give customers the run-around.

This is an actual quote from a Bitdefender 2008 chat session (when attempting to get information about the Refund process):

My IP Relay: **(sounds like laughing)** (sounds like sighing)
My IP Relay: tell him too bad u bought the anti virus from romania

I've used BitDefender for about three years, and it's performed beautifully. It loads quickly and gets down to business. A nice feature is the File Zone which is a small window in the right-hand corner of the screen that shows file activity. The program updates in the background, and it's not a drag on the OS. I highly recommend BitDefender 2008.

After install antivirus bitdefender in my Toshiba laptop (Windows XP packet 2 with windows defender installed), my lap top is unable to boot up, keep freezing eventhough I try to reboot couple time.