BitDefender Total Security 2010 Review and Discount Coupon Codes

If you have a computer connected to the Internet than having a security solutions suite installed on your PC is a must. Power requirements of various types of people differ radically. Depending on your usage pattern, work and skill level, security solutions software can seem intimidating or superficial. BitDefender Total Security 2010 has three different user interfaces for different types of users. What is common among these three interfaces is the ease of use and the effectiveness with which BitDefender protects your computer in every area.

BitDefender Total Security 2010 Discount Coupon Codes

Modes for various types of users

When installing the software on your computer, you can choose the mode. If you choose the expert mode all the settings of the security solutions suite and the features immediately become available. In the intermediate mode there is a status dashboard and many options for tuning up your computer, backing up the data, managing the network and taking care of the overall security. The novice mode hides most of the options to avoid confusing the user and just gives large buttons with which a user can scan for viruses and check for updates. There is also a button that helps you take backups, switch to game board or turn on the parental controls to regulate Internet surfing by your children.

At a glance you can see the status of all components of the software and toggle them on or off. There is a 'fix all issues'button that will let you take care of all configuration issues that come up. You can decide the events that will offer you a warning.

Certified by Labs

BitDefender Total Security 2010 has been certified for virus detection and removal by two of the most well-known labs - ICS labs and West Coast labs.

Malware detection

The malware detection and cleaning offered by BitDefender is a major improvement over its earlier versions. For some of the malware that was apparently more of a threat, BitDefender remove the malware on its own during the scan. For others we were given the option to decide what to do with them. One can either choose to quarantine them or delete them.

Most malware and key loggers were detected by BitDefender and although the occasional executable file was not deleted, it performed reasonably well at dealing with rootkits.

BitDefender relies on signatures to detect malware and there is a sandbox environment in which unknown files are run to determine malicious behavior. There is an 'active virus control protection'to further check if the file is infected with a virus. This increases the effectiveness of dealing with malware. Almost all the malware threats were detected and was impossible to install malware with BitDefender protecting the system. It also found key loggers and made them ineffective, blocking or deleting them entirely.

Spam filtering

The spam filtering offered by BitDefender works with all the major e-mail clients including Outlook, Outlook express, Windows Mail and Thunderbird. It does a good job of differentiating between genuine mail as spam messages and sending the junk into deleted items. You can define message rules to further fine-tune spam filtering with BitDefender Total Security 2010. If you invest some time training the spam filter of BitDefender, you'll find it's effectiveness improve by leaps and bounds making it very much worth your while in the long run due to the time saved. After we spent five minutes with it, not a single personal e-mail found its way into the spam folder although a few junk mails reach the inbox. This is impressive by any standard.

Firewall

The BitDefender firewall gets all the ports of the system and the stealth mode. Anyone trying to attack your computer won't be able to scan the port. Despite this you can continue to share files within your network. Network access is automatically configured when the programs are known to BitDefender. In other cases the user is asked about how the programs are to be configured. This makes the firewall management intuitive because the user is not bombarded with pop-ups to make elementary decisions and BitDefender doesn't compromise security either.

Full system scan

Installation of BitDefender does slow down the computer to some extent. Yet this year's version is much better than last year's. While the security protection offered by BitDefender has increased, it doesn't slow down the computer as much as it used to. The first full system scan that we performed on the computer with BitDefender took 26 minutes. This may be more or less with your computer depending on the amount of data and the size of the hard disk. Subsequent scans take much lesser time.

Parental control features

The parental controls offered by BitDefender Total Security 2010 are better than most other competing security solutions software. You can tie down the configuration of the accounts to each Windows account. You can prevent users from accessing specific website categories, limit the total amount of time for internet access each day available to a particular user. You can determine the specific hours in a day for Internet access. You can also regulate instant messengers such as Yahoo messenger and Windows live messenger. Blocking of a specific website does not depend on the browser used. You can use any browser and the blocking will be as effective. One area where all security solution software seem to fail is that a user can change the system clock to make the times scheduler ineffective. Nevertheless you still can control the websites visited. You can optionally log all the websites visited by a user.

Anti-phishing

The anti-phishing features of BitDefender Total Security 2010 were able to detect and prevent all phishing threats. Malicious websites trying to grab personal information from users to phishing techniques are multiplying every day and effective anti-phishing features are a very useful aspect of the BitDefender Total Security 2010 suite.

BitDefender also helps to protect your personal information. You can prevent personal information from being given out by your kids for specific users under parental control while ensuring that you are able to send information online without any restrictions whenever you want.

Online and offline backup

You can back up all the data on your computer quickly and easily with BitDefender. You can use this for online backup as well as local backup on an external hard disk or a USB drive. With every subscription of BitDefender Total Security 2010 you get 2 GB of online backup available free of cost.

Other features

Other features of the software include a disk defragmenter, file cleanup tool and the ability to clean up your registry. Every time you install software and then uninstall them a lot of entries remain in the Windows registry that are unnecessary and can be removed. When they remain there they slow down the computer. Yet removing them is fraught with risk because if you break the Windows registry, your entire Windows installation can crash. With BitDefender Total Security 2010 you can clean the Windows registry in a safer manner and boost the performance of your PC. You can also undo any changes to the registry if something goes wrong.

There is a file vault encryption feature with which you can code your files and keep them safe and secure. You can also delete them, shredding them in a manner when they become irretrievable. BitDefender Total Security 2010 is much better than the earlier versions of the software and while it may slow down your computer little bit, it will more than make up in terms of efficiency and safety to keep you happy.