Installation is pretty painless – following the on screen prompts and a reboot, BitDefender will start a configuration wizard asking if you want to start in a basic or advanced user interface and whether it should perform an update and initial scan.
Once BitDefender Antivirus was installed, I performed a definition update and let a quick scan run. The whole process took about ten minutes from start to finish. I particularly liked the numbered step approach to the wizard and scan dialog boxes – BitDefender does a great job informing you of exactly what its doing and what the next steps are.
The user interface starts in basic mode, but an advanced interface is available if you want to tweak some of the more advanced options. I found both interfaces easy to use and intuitive. The basic interface sets sensible default options and hides some of more periphery functions that most home users won't bother with. The advanced interface again remains intuitive but offers more tweaking options for each of the modules.
Regarding performance – most virus scanners I’ve seen will bog down your computer to the point of it being unusable during a full system scan. I’m happy to report that BitDefender Antivirus utilizes a pretty light footprint when it comes to scanning – only using 20-30% of the CPU and a measly 15MB of RAM. I was somewhat surprised that BitDefender doesn't let you throttle CPU usage like most mainstream Antivirus applications do.
