This post brought to you by Sunbelt Software. All opinions are 100% mine.
Of all the antivirus program available on the market, have you heard of VIPRE antivirus? In case you don’t see it clear enough, it’s spell as V-I-P-R-E antivirus! Okay, most probably you haven’t heard of this security application before.
But an antivirus unknown to you doesn’t mean that it is not a good antivirus. Whether it is a good antivirus or else, we shall find out later. Read on! 🙂
General
VIPRE Antivirus software, by Sunbelt Software, claimed to be a lightweight and highly effective antivirus program that does not slow down your PC.
Unlike older antivirus programs that have bolted on antispyware or antivirus modules to their existing software, VIPRE is designed to optimize overall performance by melding antivirus and antispyware together into one, single, powerful tool.This combination of technologies gives you high performance software that doesn’t slow down your PC, is low on system resources, and makes it easy to protect your PC from the bad guys.
Using next-generation technology, VIPRE protects your computer from all types of malware threats including viruses, adware, spyware, worms, rootkits, and more. No more sluggish PCs, system slowness, and resource headaches of older antivirus programs! Besides, VIPRE comes with free U.S. based technical support!
Installation
VIPRE antivirus has a relatively small installer file (at about 13 MB) because the virus definition file is not bundled with the installer. Due to that, the installation process can takes a while to complete as the application will run the lengthy virus definition file update (in my case, it took almost forty-five minutes), then only the application is ready for use.
During the installation, there is also a setup wizard that guides you through several settings like enabling the email protection (enable it if you have standalone email program on your system) …
…Â and enabling the ThreatNet (a user sharing community that share potentially dangerous program files).
One thing to note here that you need to uninstall your currently using antivirus application before installing the VIPRE antivirus, because it is not possible to run two different antivirus programs on the same system. You can try to have two security applications, but trust me you will only crash your system. 🙂
Main Interface
The main interface shows you the overview of the application. From the main window, you can click to scan your system, enabling/disabling Active protection or the Email protection and more. Even non-technical user finds the application is easy to navigate, there is the main menu at the top left of the window, and a set of tabs at the top right.
Advanced users can further configure the settings by clicking the Edit Settings option. Under the Tools tab, you can find additional system tools like a secure file eraser, a history cleaner and a PC Explorer. I guess you can explore the tools by yourself later.
What do I like about VIPRE Antivirus?
After using this security program for three days, I am ready to give my opinions on VIPRE Antivirus. Before trying VIPRE, I have tried a handful of free as well as paid antivirus programs before, like AVG Antivirus, Avira Antivir, Microsoft Security Essentials, BitDefender Antivirus, Panda Antivirus, Kaspersky Antivirus, Norton Antivirus and McAfee.
Based on my experiences, there are some programs that were heavy on system resources and hogged the processor’s power while running a scan. As a result, you can hardly run any hardcore stuff (like playing the movie, run Photoshop) on your computer while the antivirus program is running it’s tasks.
Unlike some antivirus programs, VIPRE antivirus is very light on system resources. It uses very little memory. While scanning your system for threats, you can carry out other tasks (can be light or heavy) on your computer without compromise your system performance. Computers with older processors and lower memory should prefer VIPRE antivirus.
After every completed virus scanning, VIPRE will display a list of threats and shows you the default (or recommended) action for each threat. For non-advanced users, you can just let VIPRE to carry out the default actions on the threats. In most of the cases, the threats will be quarantined. One more thing that I like about VIPRE is that it will always update the program with the latest virus definition file before scanning.
Every quick scan takes about half and hour while deep scan can takes hours to be completed. VIPRE antivirus has scheduled scan feature. By default, the antivirus program will a deep scan (or full system scan) every day at 1:00 AM.
Try VIPRE Antivirus
VIPRE antivirus can be purchased at $29.95 a copy (for one PC), $39.95 for 2 PCs and $49.95 for the use on 3 or more PCs, at www.vipreantivirus.com. VIPRE antivirus offers a free 15 days trial and works with Windows Server (2000, 2003 and 2008), XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
