Question Looking to simplify...

[dargo72]

I currently use Webroot Secure Anywhere and Malwarebytes for my PC's protection. I also use CCleaner for cleaning and registry fixes. I would like to get away from using 3 products and was curious if Bitdefender Premium was a good option to cover all the bases.

Also, I currently use Dashlane for my passwords but noticed that Bitdefender has some capabilities in this area as well. Is it as robust as Dashlane or should I just stick with Dashlane?

Also, I get A LOT of junk mail. It looks like Bitdefender has some built-in spam mail protection that works with Outlook. If anyone has experience with this tool, I'd love to hear your opinions.

Thank you,

 

[PC Tailor]

I also use CCleaner for cleaning and registry fixes

As a first port of call, avoid anything registry cleaning based. These can only really cause harm. That and all of the cleaning that CCleaner does you can do yourself anyway.

However Bitdefender is an excellent tool that has a lot of things under one roof, that and it is top 2 AV pretty consistently for performance and protection. Bitdefender paid packages have:

• Cleaner/optimising (again, i tend to avoid)
• Live protection (AV, Firewall etc.)
• Password manager
• Safepay
• Spam filters etc.

and more.

I'm a long serving customer of Bitdefender and i would never really move away from it.

 

[britechguy]

This is not a "dis" of Bitdefender or any other product. The closest thing you're ever going to get to "objective" data on antivirus or security suite products is from the third-party labs that test these things that have no affiliation with their makers. Each uses different methods, and those can impact ratings [or at least relative positions] very significantly depending on the weighting put on each. But, at least for any given lab the methods (with a couple of notable exceptions) remain stable over time, allowing for comparison over time. See the most recent, along with the last several years, of test results from:
AV Test

AV Comparatives

SE Labs (Reports Page)

MRG Effitas (360 Protection Testing Category)

@PC Tailor is absolutely correct that any registry cleaner should be avoided like the plague. At best they're snake oil and at worst they can reduce a system to a proverbial smoldering pile of rubble. See also: Microsoft support policy for the use of registry cleaning utilities. They explicitly recommend against their use.

I have never had any issue with CCleaner or any other "junk file" cleaner when using that specific feature, though. But that's entirely different than anything that touches the system registry.

Who is your e-mail service provider? Are they not doing junk mail filtering ahead of you receiving it? Most do these days.