bitdefender Internet Security 2012 - 3 User

Pros: Attractive website, pretty good instructions, chat function, email for help function, attractive control functions, and price. I bought it on sale.

Cons: P. Poor Support, despite a great deal of espousing full support. After using Lavasoft's Total Security that worked well, I went to BitDefender, and am disappointed. Help techs try their best but easily kick up issues to higher level and zero response after over two weeks. Issues remain.

Other Thoughts: I abandoned BitDefender in 2009 due to terrible support response and continuous recurring functional issues. I was swayed by recent good reviews of Internet 2013 and good pre-sales chatting that answered my questions. After buying and installing, I have found support is the same as it was in 2009, but now paid support is available too. Rediculous to build and sell a program and then be expected to pay to get it to work the way the advertising says it should work. This is my experience with BitDefender.

Pros: Works OK when it's set up.

Cons: Setup can (seemingly) take forever.

Other Thoughts: Bitdefender has designed this software in such a way that it's EXTREMELY challenging to update 2012 to 2013. I eventually did it, and I'm no dummy. Most people would have given up. The people who designed this are very smart. They could have made the process easy, but (it seems) they deliberately made it hard, so someone would (in a fit of desperation!) lay out more money for a new installation of 2013.

The solution was having to uninstall Bitdefender completely (google for that!) reinstall 2012, then install 2013, with lots of re-booting in the process. Big time killer.

In comparison, Kaspersky makes the upgrade easy. But Kaspersky's browser keyboard doesn't work with 64 bit. Bitdefender does.

I also can't log into my Bitdefender account, via the software. What's up with that, Bitdefender?!!! I was able to do it via the website, to get the 279 days remaining on my subscription, but (oddly) there seems to be no way for the software to login to "My Bitdefender". Just plain stu

Pros: Does its job very well. Although it seemingly took forever (nearly 3 months?), I finally did receive the rebate in the form of a pre-paid debit card. I have 12 GB of RAM in my comp. Bitdefender silently does its job for me, not getting in the way. Those with marginal RAM/processing power may experience issues.

Cons: Pre-paid debit card is a hellish experience. See below.

Other Thoughts: Pre-paid debit card is a mess. It causes Walmart cashier's heads to explode with frustration and confusion. They have to physically enter the amount you're wishing to spend, and it takes them forever to unlock the secret. This spending of the rebate $$$ should be easy and not hard. Or........is it intentionally being made hard?!!!

Will not filter spam with Thunderbird. Bitdefender.........is this really that hard to configure for other email programs than Outlook? C'mon. You guys in Romania are pretty smart. You can get it done!

Will not block unwanted banners as Kaspersky does. Wish it did.

Pros: Uses less resources than previous versions. Autopilot mode is simple to use, toggle it and forget it.

Cons: Miss the activity indicator

Other Thoughts: I have used Bitdefender products since 2008, after a competitors product missed some nasty stuff than result in having to wipe a hard drive and start over.

Last year I used Total Security but found myself not using the online storage, so this year I opted for a simpler version.

I have installed the software on both a Vista 64 bit and Win 7 64 bit machine. It's working well.

This newer version is much less of a resource hog than previous versions, which is a major improvement.

Pros: No Problems on Win 7 64 Platform,
has detected 97% of all malware I've seen on my PC and scan times for my large amounts of data seem to fly by.
Easy to use and intuitive interface

Cons: Had some issues with internet download manager initially, but the development team was quick to identify and solve the problems that were causing my internet slow downs. Con to have such a bug, but ended up a pro with the time and way the company handled it.

Pros: Excellent detection/removal rate

Cons: I was unable to save the installer package, slow at times on my home PC.

Other Thoughts: If I could do it again, I might have used just the antivirus version of Bitdefender alongside another firewall. The whole download of BD IS was quite large & stressing on my PC but the malware detection is nearly unbeatable.

Pros: Installs very well on win 7 64 bit. Nice user interface. Seemes to work well in general except for preventing spam. See "other thoughts". Does not slow ystem down. Fast security sweeps.

Cons: Does not filter out spam. You have to manually enter spamer's email domains or adresses and even then I am not sure if the anti-spam is working. I use MS Office 2010 with outlook. So I hit the block address button in Outlook whiuch is alot easier.

Other Thoughts: Because of what I consider a total failuer to fully integrate with MS Outlook, (a surprise because I am sure it is a highly used email program) it makes me wonder if I am getting second rate performance in the malware, spyware, and virus functions as well. I have a lack of confidence in this product's performance.