- Performance
- Detection Rate
- Interface
- Ease Of Use
- Learning Curve
The PC Security World has evolved greatly. From there being just two of the majors, Norton and Mcafee, to an endless list of great products one after the other. Among the many awesome newcomers, we are reviewing one called BullGuard. As the name suggests, BullGuard is a take on your cyber K9 companion, we used this software on both new and old systems to see the amount of RAM it used and the number of threats it caught, to our surprise this is a pretty good piece of software. Not only does it provide protection, it has some fancy tune-up features as well as a backup hard drive in the cloud for every user! Sweet ain’t it? Read on.
It All Starts With A Shiny Interface
BullGuard sports a very minimalist and sleek interface. Very easy on the eyes, a combination of hot-red with silver, it is a very compact product with all of the main features easily accessible right from the main panel. It doesn’t add any extra load to the RAM or processing speeds either.
Under The Hood
The main control panel of BullGuard is not complicated either, bringing all of the main settings on the front for users to see and change. Everything is controlled by the user, you don’t have to waste hours finding the firewall to enable access to your favorite program.
Backup, You Say?
Yes, BullGuard comes equipped with its own cloud backup service called BullGuard Online Drive. The size of the disc varies according to the subscription, we received a 5GB backup drive with our review unit. It creates a nice little drive right in your My Computer window, observe:
A simple drag and drop system, much like DropBox. A very handy feature.
Wait, It Tunes Up My PC Too?
BullGuard could have developed a separate program for PC Tune Up but they’re not a greedy lot. They embedded a pretty nice Pc Tune Up feature right in their security program, it takes care of the basic tune-up needs and then some!
Safe Browsing, Enhanced
Remember those insane Facebook spam bots? When you click on a certain link they used to spam your entire friends list with weird messages? Well this saved me. BullGuard carries a fully loaded website blocker which integrates itself seamlessly to every browser, even a hint of an online trojan makes it block the website from opening, if you’re sure of the site being clean it still gives you the option of opening it. The online community at BullGuard is very active and keeps adding malicious websites to their database, you can help too by reporting websites.
Safe Searching
Search your favorite search engine with ease, BullGuard provides a pre-review of every website that comes up. This feature was first introduced by McAfee as a stand-alone program.
The Detection Rate
We performed the full-scan on one of our old computer systems, it picked up a huge number of Trojans and Spyware alike. The detection rate is immense and the full-scan took a total of 2 hours on a Pentium 4 PC with 160 GB of scanned data.
That Reassuring Green Tick
What does every computer user need at the end of the day from their security system? That reassuring green tick of safety and protection that tells us our computer is healthy and well. A little love doesn’t hurt. BullGuard really makes you feel you have a trusty K9 companion protecting you from harm.
Our Verdict, Is This Software For You?
We have seriously loved the inflow of awesome and minimal antivirus programs over the span of five years, BullGuard brings a few new and nice features to the table which I am sure will be followed in the 2012 versions of the other antivirus products. I am glad people are moving away from their Norton products, unless they create a less-of-a-system-hog they can’t join the league of awesome security products. BullGuard isn’t expensive, a fully loaded Antivirus license for a year is about $29, the online backup disc space is surprisingly cheap. We recommend this product as one of our favorite antivirus programs of the new year. After using it personally for three weeks, most of my review was done on a very old Pentium 4 and it did not cause any performance issues or start-up lags, I have no complaints whatsoever.
Try it for yourself for 90 days: