Looking for opinions on BD/F vs. MSE for a Win 7 system.....Which offers better protection. Not looking for a bunch of advanced tweaks - just download -set-and forget.
Bitdefender Free or Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows 7
- Thread starter Mjolnir
- Start date
- Dec 17, 2014
- 1,357
- Sep 8, 2019
- 461
Bitdefender has 6 times the resource usage, but has way better protection and is less confusing, your choice though.
- May 7, 2016
- 1,597
For protection use VOODOO SHIELD Free (set-and forget) it is very light and very good software.Or upgrade to Windows 8.1 at least.
No it doesn't. A lot of people are finding the 2020 version to be very light and many people find WD to be heavy.
- Jan 25, 2018
- 155
no, Bitdefender free is very light on my system. it is a very good product.
- Sep 8, 2019
- 461
Oh, nevermind then, but there are still better options, like Kaspersky, which has better protection, more features and is lighter, but I guess people like bitdefender more as its way simpler (altough a pain to install)
Edit: it uses 100 more megabytes of memory than kaspersky, as much as avast, so its still heavy.
Last edited:
- Jan 25, 2018
- 155
let me tell you something. what makes an av heavy or not is how much cpu and disk usage it takes. the ram usage doesn't have any realtion to make your system heavy.
- Sep 8, 2019
- 461
It constantly used 7-10 CPU%, no matter what I did, which is enough for me to count it as heavy.
Heavy or light is not really a concern for me, I am more focused on the protection aspect of the programs. Seems there is no love for MSE around here though.
- Dec 17, 2014
- 1,357
Well, Windows Defender on Windows 10, in my opinion, is ok. But on Windows 7, MSE is very poor protection compared to Bitdefender. MSE and Windows Defender have different levels of protection.
- May 26, 2014
- 1,165
Free upgrade at the Russian Staff Note List of Legit Daily Giveaways sites (Contributed by MT Members) scroll down Giveaways link use google translate,the best giveaway site I have ever used ,I know you might want to stay w/windows 7 but really good not too.gl
- May 14, 2019
- 116
I wouldn't use either. Kaspersky cloud free would be my recommendation in your case.
On some systems BD will be lighter than Kaspersky, as it is not particularly light. However, I do agree that it is a better antivirus.
RAM usage has no bearing on how heavy or light an antivirus is. What actually causes slowdowns is high CPU and or high disk usage. Sometimes more RAM usage is a good thing as it allows an antivirus to keep more data in the RAM at once, rather than swapping it to the hard drive/SSD.
Why antivirus uses so much RAM - And why that is actually a good thing!
Learn why freeing RAM doesn't necessarily speed up your computer. In reality it's often quite the opposite.
blog.emsisoft.com
- May 14, 2019
- 116
On some systems BD will be lighter than Kaspersky, as it is not particularly light. However, I do agree that it is a better antivirus.
RAM usage has no bearing on how heavy or light an antivirus is. What actually causes slowdowns is high CPU and or high disk usage. Sometimes more RAM usage is a good thing as it allows an antivirus to keep more data in the RAM at once, rather than swapping it to the hard drive/SSD.
Why antivirus uses so much RAM - And why that is actually a good thing!
Learn why freeing RAM doesn't necessarily speed up your computer. In reality it's often quite the opposite.
Yes, using more RAM does not mean the software is heavier automatically, it may have good reason to consume more RAM, to improve the application's performance... I prefer higher RAM usage over higher CPU usage any day. However, Bitdefender is among the heaviest AV's I have ever used. And I'm not talking about RAM usage here, I'm talking about overall system responsiveness. The only product that's even worse (far worse) is Sophos Home Premium. It even lagged Windows settings UI, clear delays after each mouse click before opening the settings. This kind of behavior is simply unacceptable for an AV. Bitdefender is nowhere near that bad, but it is still heavier than Kaspersky for sure. Latest Kaspersky version is actually rather light, especially if you disable SSL scanning which I'd recommend doing anyway.
- Jun 23, 2018
- 441
On my old Core Duo Windows 7 laptop, MSE was very heavy, and it offers mediocre protection at best. I ended up running Webroot and OSArmor on it, but only because I had a free Webroot license. If I were still running Windows 7, I would probably try it with the free Kaspersky cloud product.
I don't have much personal experience with new 2020 version of Bitdefender, as I uninstalled it fairly quickly, as on my test system it was buggy. However I've seen plenty of posts here about it being very light, although it may be heavier for the first few days, while it adjusts to your system. So while, I don't doubt that it was very heavy for you, it seems that many people are finding the opposite on their systems. It is a great example of how much AV performance can vary from one system to the next.
- May 14, 2019
- 116
That's the other thing I forgot to mention. Bitdefender products have always been riddled with bugs... So nothing new there and another reason I could never ever recommend Bitdefender. Its just heavy, buggy and produces still considerably more false positives than likes of Kaspersky or Eset for instance. The only free AV I could pick over Windows Defender is Kaspersky Cloud Free. And in this case with Windows 7, I'd say KCF is easy recommendation over anything else. Windows 7 does not have all the basic security features WD benefits from, which makes MSE less powerful on Windows 7.
Well... If Bitdefender slows down a rather modern system with Core i7, NVME SSD and 32GB of RAM the issue is definitely with Bitdefender and not with my hardware. Its been like this since like forever with Bitdefender. I remember few years back it had a bug in which it couldn't even update its virus definitions
And their customer support is one of the worst ever as well. But yeah if some people don't mind or notice the performance hogging guess its fine for them. I am myself extremely sensitive to that stuff and if I notice AV slows my machine down I'm uninstalling it instantly. Efficient coding, lightness and stability are probably the most important things in AV for me.
Well according to many posters here and at Wilders. the new 2020 is a lot less buggier than previous versions. It's important to note that while BD is very buggy for some people, others have no issues at all. It seems that quite a few people who has issues with bugs in previous versions, don't have issues with the 2020 release.
It's not that they don't mind, it's that for some people Bitdefender is light. As I've already mentioned, antivirus performance can vary greatly from one computer to the next. Take for example ESET products. While they have had a reputation for years as being extremely light, I found versions prior to v12, to be quite heavy on some of my computers. Another example is Windows Defender. Lots of people find it to quite heavy, even on high end systems and also, there are many people who find it to be quite light.
While this thread is about free antiviruses, this is a good example of why it is very important to install the trial version of an antivirus and try it for a few weeks, to see how it performs on your own system, before purchasing.
- May 14, 2019
- 116
Its more down to use cases than system configuration I would say (given you have fairly modern machine). More resource heavy AVs reveal themselves when you're running more resource intensive tasks, but if all you do is light web browsing you might not see even resource heavy AV slowing you down much at all, thinking its light when it really isn't. Naturally its also down to system configuration, how fast CPU and storage you have and how much RAM and are there any software conflicts etc.
For WD it depends entirely on your workload. Most users probably don't move large files all that often so WD can be pretty light for them. But I guarantee everyone will notice major difference between WD and any other 3rd party AV when transferring large files on your hard drives. WD scans everything and that causes major slow down in file transfers. Otherwise its pretty light AV, so it really depends what you're doing on the system.
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