Labs

BitDefender 9 Professional Plus contains anti-virus software, a firewall and a spam detector, but no anti-spyware tool. After installation it scans the system files before rebooting the system ready for use. The user interface has a choice of skins. It's quite easy to use and provides plenty of options for customising the product's settings. By default, the software shows a graph of hard disk and network activity in the corner, but it's easily hidden.

Unlike other products, BitDefender uses its own scheduler to run regular virus scans. You set up scheduled scans using a wizard that gives you considerable control over what to scan, how, when and how often. The scanner is slow but at least it's thorough, checking all files not just executable file types.

BitDefender's virus definitions are updated hourly, reducing the chances for a virus to go unrecognized. To aid the detection of unknown viruses the product also uses a heuristic module that runs suspect

The real-time virus protection covers more malware entry points than any other product. As well as incoming and outgoing e-mail the software checks Internet messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing, Web downloads and blocks diallers, and the firewall module includes a script blocker. The on-the-fly e-mail checking works quickly, but it deletes messages containing a virus instead of cleaning them.

BitDefender's memory requirements are low and the product has little effect on system performance. Applications take longer to load, but the delay is not unacceptable. The firewall seems very effective and the anti-spam module is well integrated with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. Sadly there's no support for other popular mail clients like Mozilla Thunderbird.

The installation disc doubles as a bootable rescue CD called LinuxDefender. Based on the Knoppix distribution of Linux, it provides a full graphical interface from which to run BitDefender to clean your hard disk. If a network connection is detected it can download the latest virus definitions in order to detect and clean the latest viruses. LinuxDefender includes a memory tester and network vulnerability checker, and can even turn a spare PC into a virus and spam checking mail server. However, we experienced hardware compatibility issues and had trouble getting the disc to work.