I am always amazed at just how many anti-virus programs are available online for free, yet so many computer users are still shelling out cash for Norton or McAfee products. Everyone has an opinion on those programs, but as your Freeware Frenzy editor, I’m here to bring you free alternatives. I’ve covered a few others in the past, but for this week I’m taking a look at BitDefender 8 for your virus combating needs. 

First let’s talk about installation. After agreeing to the license, choose between Typical, Custom (choose to install any of three modules; the general program, antivirus, update) or Complete. To explore all that the program has to offer, I chose Complete. An informative warning message pops up explaining that your virus scan results are sent back to BitDefender Labs. No personal information is sent, but for anyone worried about that, there is an option in the program to disable that function. Next up are a few check box options for what BitDefender should do after the install. Each option has an explanation to tell you why that action should be allowed. All are checked by default (Update, Scan Windows system folder, Open Readme, create desktop shortcut) and I left them. Installation itself takes only a couple moments and the scan will begin immediately. The Readme file just lists the feature set and system requirements, so feel free to skip it as I did. The system folder scan took only two minutes and found nothing. When you close the scan results, the installer will prompt for, but not force, a reboot.

As the de facto setup for AV programs, BitDefender uses a combination of three main tabs and a few submenus for each. As the Free version, BitDefender is purely for anti-virus scanning. The active shield is only available in the paid Standard or Professional versions. There are plenty of firewalls and shields available though; see my reviews of Avast, AVG and SpywareBlaster. But let’s take a look at what the Free version does have to offer.

The General tab is divided into four areas. Status shows the update version and the last scan date. Registration applies only to the paid versions, as you cannot change the product key for the Free edition. Settings contains a short list of options, such as starting with Windows, sending reports as I mentioned earlier, and skins. As a helpful plus, you will find that on every screen, a panel on the right will provide explanations and details for whatever happens to be on that page.

Scanning lets you choose entire drives, certain folders and even specific files. There are a number of settings to customize your scan that you can see the following screenshot. For my scan, I merely checked my C: drive and left the settings at their default. The scheduler lets you setup multiple scans to run on your schedule, whether that is hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly at a specific time of day. BitDefender recommends a weekly scan but you can setup anything you wish. Then you choose what folders and drives you would like to scan, file types (all is the default), a heuristic or non-heuristic scan, actions to take (the first action defaults to Clean, and the second action defaults to Quarantine). Finally name a log file, review your setup and save. From then on your scan will run automatically, the actions you specified will be taken for any infections and the results are saved for you to examine later. BitDefender receives points for this feature, as many free virus scanners do not include scheduling.

The scan itself was slow, taking a full 60 minutes to scan approximately 600,000 files. Luckily no viruses were uncovered. Lastly, it is worth noting that the Help file is very thorough and full of screenshots. To conclude, BitDefender is yet another anti-virus program that fails to distinguish itself from the other available options. Though completely sufficient, I cannot find any reason to recommend it over the popular favorites AVG and Avast. Check out BitDefender at: http://www.bitdefender.com/