Review-- Bitdefender 8 Free

[review]

Evaluated bitdefender 8 free as a possible candidate for addition to the
malware detection arsenal and this is what I found.

Watch out for the installation process, as you will see constant alerts
coming from your firewall and any other system intrusion detection items
that you run, not to mention the phoning home firestorm that follows.

The interface is sparse and options are few, when they finally work,
as it was necessary to unselect those not wanted twice, before they were
finally saved.

Updates do not register as being done, so you can instantly update again
and it appears as if the update was not previously done.

So, brought out the old 199x test trojan and a couple of other heuristic
type files that it should have found and it called them *OK*. All are
flagged by my other detectors.

You have to use the context menu to scan, there is no other way, which is
real nice when you have numerous drives and partitions.

It installs itself under "Softwin" and is around 13Mb, with 132 files.

Scans somewhat slowly, but has a useful red progress bar (best feature).

I actually hoped for this software to be reasonably usable.

Anyway, in short, I am dumping bitdefender 8 free, without delay!

Just hope it doesn't leave malware behind.

 

[Eric Huebner]

Am 05 Mar 2006 11:24:20 GMT schrieb [email protected]:

Evaluated bitdefender 8 free as a possible candidate for addition to the
malware detection arsenal and this is what I found.

Watch out for the installation process, as you will see constant alerts
coming from your firewall and any other system intrusion detection items
that you run, not to mention the phoning home firestorm that follows.

The interface is sparse and options are few, when they finally work,
as it was necessary to unselect those not wanted twice, before they were
finally saved.

Updates do not register as being done, so you can instantly update again
and it appears as if the update was not previously done.

So, brought out the old 199x test trojan and a couple of other heuristic
type files that it should have found and it called them *OK*. All are
flagged by my other detectors.

You have to use the context menu to scan, there is no other way, which is
real nice when you have numerous drives and partitions.

It installs itself under "Softwin" and is around 13Mb, with 132 files.

Scans somewhat slowly, but has a useful red progress bar (best feature).

I actually hoped for this software to be reasonably usable.

Anyway, in short, I am dumping bitdefender 8 free, without delay!

Just hope it doesn't leave malware behind.

Me too (your 3 final sentences).
Some other reasons: Updates worked only when logged in as admin and after
that it required a reboot. Plus it started tons of background tasks.

 

[badgolferman]

Evaluated bitdefender 8 free as a possible candidate for addition to
the malware detection arsenal and this is what I found.

Watch out for the installation process, as you will see constant
alerts coming from your firewall and any other system intrusion
detection items that you run, not to mention the phoning home
firestorm that follows.

The interface is sparse and options are few, when they finally work,
as it was necessary to unselect those not wanted twice, before they
were finally saved.

Updates do not register as being done, so you can instantly update
again and it appears as if the update was not previously done.

So, brought out the old 199x test trojan and a couple of other
heuristic type files that it should have found and it called them OK.
All are flagged by my other detectors.

You have to use the context menu to scan, there is no other way,
which is real nice when you have numerous drives and partitions.

It installs itself under "Softwin" and is around 13Mb, with 132 files.

Scans somewhat slowly, but has a useful red progress bar (best
feature).

I actually hoped for this software to be reasonably usable.

Anyway, in short, I am dumping bitdefender 8 free, without delay!

Just hope it doesn't leave malware behind.

I had the same experiences you did. I really wanted it to be the one
on my system but it was unusable. The constant firewall warnings
during normal operation were unbearable despite giving permissions
forever to that program. I believe for updates to take effect the
computer has to reboot and my machine is always on. The drain on the
system was also noticeable despite my 2GB RAM. The supposed superior
detection capabilities were not worth the trouble it caused.

 

[ms]

Evaluated bitdefender 8 free as a possible candidate for addition to the
malware detection arsenal and this is what I found.

Watch out for the installation process, as you will see constant alerts
coming from your firewall and any other system intrusion detection items
that you run, not to mention the phoning home firestorm that follows.

The interface is sparse and options are few, when they finally work,
as it was necessary to unselect those not wanted twice, before they were
finally saved.

I run W98SE and had a very bad experience with it. On install, it was very
invasive with no option initionally to turn functions off. Then it immediately
went online to get updated, then caused a screen freeze. It had about 6 items on
my list of "bad actor" programs, before I even did a virus scan.

Another fellow also with W98SE likes it and uses it, so YMMV.

Mike Sa

 

[BoB]

On 05 Mar 2006 11:24:20 GMT, [email protected] wrote:

I don't know what your problem is/was, maybe the OS, but will comment
to balance your review. I've had BD8 installed on my Win98SE since last
October with NONE of the problems you've mentioned. It has matched KAV
in finding malware in the limited tests I have thrown at it.

 

[Kerodo]

Evaluated bitdefender 8 free as a possible candidate for addition to the
malware detection arsenal and this is what I found.

Watch out for the installation process, as you will see constant alerts
coming from your firewall and any other system intrusion detection items
that you run, not to mention the phoning home firestorm that follows.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here ("phoning home firestorm"). BD
updates every hour, so you will need to allow it out on port 80, perhaps
there are even several components needing outbound access, I don't
remember. Nothing unusual that I found though. Most likely your firewall
and other security products are just overly annoying..

The interface is sparse and options are few, when they finally work,
as it was necessary to unselect those not wanted twice, before they were
finally saved.

Never had that problem, however, I did find other versions of BD (9 std) to
be a little buggy and flakey at times. The first time you do an update, I
believe it asks for a system reboot. Thereafter, it just does a reload of
itself after every actual update. Sometimes this reload didn't go right
and hung, or crashed etc. But then I am talking about BD 9 Std and not the
Free 8 version, so there will be differences.

My own impression of all the BD products is that they are pretty good at
detection, but also somewhat buggy and annoying. Hence I have decided
against them also.