Review by Jerry Jackson Jr.

I’ve used too many anti-virus and anti-spyware applications over the years. Bitdefender is another in a long line of programs that get the job done, but simply aren’t worth the extra money after the end of 2009. First, let me make it clear that Bitdefender does everything they claim it will do. It does an excellent job identifying and isolating risks to your PC. In that sense, Bitdefender is great and worth buying.

Unfortunately for Bitdefender, Microsoft finally figured out that they need to do something about Windows security. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is now available for free download from the Microsoft website and is better than Bitdefender in a number of ways:nn1) MSE is free.n2) MSE doesn’t hog PC resources … so your computer doesn’t slow down because of the anti-virus software.n3) MSE is easier to manage because it integrates well with Windows.

Bitdefender identified all of the test viruses and adware I intentionally tried to expose my PC to, but why pay money for software if there is something else that does essentially the same thing for free? One advantage that Bitdefender has over MSE is that Bitdefender runs a full system scan faster than MSE, but Bitdefender also consumes more system resources … so your computer slows down when Bitdefender is running a full scan.

Bottom line, there’s nothing wrong with this software but I just can’t recommend it now that Microsoft Security Essentials is available.