BitDefender Internet Security 2009 Review

After reading a few great online reviews for BitDefender Internet Security 2009 (BD 2009) from places like TopTenReviews.com and PCWorld.com, I had pretty high expectations. So I went and purchased a 3 license version of BD 2009 to give it a try on my home computers. Well, my experience was not nearly what I was hoping for. I am not sure how to say it in a nice way but have to say that BD 2009 has some serious issues (bugs).

I basically got a chance to install the software on 3 different types of computers which gave me a good opportunity to evaluate the software on different hardware platforms. All three of the computers were running Windows XP.

Cons:

Here are some of the issues that I encountered:

1. BD 2009 does not always install correctly. The result is the software is not able to update (eg definitions) to their server properly. An error message will display indicating the BD server is not reachable. If that happens you will need to remove and reinstall the BD 2009 application. (This happened on 2 of the 3 machines for me).
2. BD 2009 seems to have problems working with Internet Explorer. I have seen this on all of my computers. I have noticed that if you try to get your gmail using Internet Explorer, your computer will freeze (25-30 seconds) with the CPU usage pegged out at 100%. At that time there will be nothing you can do at all to break out of the freeze state but wait until the running process lets go of the CPU. Then your gmail inbox will come up. This problem does not happen with FireFox which is my preferred browser.
3. Parental Control does not work correctly. I had parental control setup for my kids and it was constantly blocking tons of pages which it was not supposed to. I ended up just turning it off.
   
4. Poor Customer Support. I emailed BitDefender's customer support (documenting issue #2 above) and never got a single response. The problem is still happening after many months.
   
5. BD 2009 slows down your bootup significantly. I noticed that if you are running BD 2009 than your bootup is going to take almost an additional minute to boot up.
6. The hard drive scans take a long time and are not automated by default. It seems like every 7 days you will be prompted to scan your hard drive manually of malware which seems to take a really long time. It seems like they should have that be automated be default.

Pros:

1. BD 2009 is the probably one of the most inexpensive of the Internet Security Suites available. Mine was about $40 for the 3 license version
2. It seems to do a pretty good job at keeping the computers clean of malware if you don't mind the issues 1-6 above.

Conclusion:

I honestly say that I wouldn't recommend this software for anyone to use based on what I have experienced. I am going to have to give BD 2009 a 1 rating (on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being great) based on the bugginess of the software, the software performance and poor customer service.