Bullguard?

Discussion in 'other anti-virus software' started by ttomm1946, Mar 26, 2015.

  1. ttomm1946

    ttomm1946 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2014
    Posts:
    217
    Anyone have experience with either anti virus or IS 2015?
     
  2. Mayahana

    Mayahana Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 13, 2014
    Posts:
    2,220
    Other than the 5-year old child drawn interface, their declining performance, and no longer developed HIPS (Novashield from MIT), I don't know much else about it..
     
  3. coolcfan

    coolcfan Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 1, 2008
    Posts:
    130
    It's not popular in my country, at least not as popular as other products with BitDefender engine, like F-Secure and G-Data.

    Also, it has a bug with chinese path in quarantine that has existed for years. Only recently they tried to improve it, but haven't completely fixed it yet.

    http://www.bullguard.com/zh-cn/products/bullguard-internet-security/tech-specs.aspx
    Well the UI is average level IMO, not sooooooooo bad...
     
  4. hamlet

    hamlet Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Posts:
    229
    Mayahana's assertions aside, I believe that BullGuard is a good product that should provide quality protection for most users. I don't know if it is on the cutting edge technology wise, but BullGuard is actively developed ( see http://www.bullguard.com/about/release-notes.aspx ) and it usually scores fine on standard tests. I agree that the interface it not optimal. It looks a bit cartoonish and it can be fairly hard to find things in the menu structure.

    I do have a current license for the Internet Security version. It includes lots of extra tools that are supposed to keep your computer running smooth and your software up-to-date. If you like that kind of thing, this might be a good product for you. Also, the Internet Security version provides an easy to use firewall. It is one of those simple ones that pops up a dialog box the first time something wants to connect out to the Internet. It is easy to understand and easy to monitor programs this way.

    Having said all that, I am not running BullGuard at the moment because it feels a little heavy on my desktop computer. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that BullGuard seems to have good tech support. I used their chat service once and it was great. Their discussion forums are very low traffic.

    I think BullGuard is worth testing if you are interested. You need to see how it runs on your machines.
     
  5. ttomm1946

    ttomm1946 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2014
    Posts:
    217
    I noticed their forums are slow also..:eek:
     
  6. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2014
    Posts:
    1,013
    It was great until they decided they wanna revamp the interface then it looked like a 7 year old drew some jobbers and handed over to Bull Guard, they can't even get their margins and scaling right, everything on the right looks cut off until you expand it, never trying it again

    Oh and to add insult to injury, when I did use it and reinstalled a few times, even though I had deactivated the license on the machine active before reinstalling, when contacting their online chat support told me that I am abusing my license and further abuse would lead to black listing my license, yeah great, restrict me on how I use my pc and license no thank you
     
  7. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2008
    Posts:
    10,239
    Location:
    Lloegyr
    BullGuard was the first AV I ever used. This was on an underpowered notebook. The two AV's after that I employed were Norton and McAfee. I only used the latter two as they were provided by my ISP. After that I ceased using conventional AV suites and decided on lighter options. At the time, I didn't consider BullGuard to be particularly heavy compared to Norton and McAfee.
     
  8. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2014
    Posts:
    1,013
    Last year Bull Guard was the best for me, it was the bit defender in protection without the bit defender quirks and Web browsing slow down but they had to spoil that, they just couldn't leave it the heck alone
     
  9. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2008
    Posts:
    10,239
    Location:
    Lloegyr
    Yeah, it was pretty good back in the day if I remember. Several years ago, in my country, it seemed almost all new PC's were sold with bundled BullGuard or Sophos AV. BullGuard had a good reputation for being relatively light, problem-free and good detection for quite a while. It's a shame if they've not kept this up. I had a good experience with it.
     
  10. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2014
    Posts:
    1,013
    What''s worse is why don't they take their customers' suggestions seriously? I and many others have complained a lot about the stupid UI, I've complained about how the alignment and borders aready all wrong, I understand when the new GUI was first launched might have bugs but now? After more than 6 months, the have no excuse for fixing it, they're only hurting their sales, let that great Donatello artist who created the lamest GUI of all time enjoy
     
  11. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2008
    Posts:
    10,239
    Location:
    Lloegyr
    In my experience a lot of companies don't take any real notice of customer suggestions. I'm guessing it's a financial thing with BullGuard and they don't want to spend the money to improve their product, or at least get it back to what it was.
     
  12. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2014
    Posts:
    1,013
    sad but true, I actually liked it a lot
     
  13. ronjor

    ronjor Global Moderator

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2003
    Posts:
    163,035
    Location:
    Texas
    Several off topic posts removed. Stay on the thread topic.
     
  14. coolcfan

    coolcfan Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 1, 2008
    Posts:
    130
    By the way, their firewall is Outpost Firewall.
     
  15. Firecat

    Firecat Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jan 2, 2005
    Posts:
    8,251
    Location:
    The land of no identity :D
    I never figured BullGuard to be a company that has fallen on hard times financially, and yet when I see the extent to which they are pushing the discounts lately, I do begin to wonder....
     
  16. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2008
    Posts:
    10,239
    Location:
    Lloegyr
    Several years ago BullGuard or Sophos were the AV's that seemed to be predominantly preinstalled on new machines in the UK. This isn't that surprising as I believe both companies are British based (BullGuard is Anglo-Swedish I think). But over the past few years they have had a fair bit of competition from Symantec and McAfee, who most probably have more financial clout.
     
  17. hamlet

    hamlet Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Posts:
    229
    I loaded BullGuard back on my desktop a few days ago and it is running much lighter than I remember in the past. They must have made some good tweaks over the past few months. They seem to do good security work and have staked out some admirable positions vis-a-vis cooperation with governments, but it is hard to see how they can keep up with newer technologies if they have a smaller user base. I am assuming they have a smaller user based mostly from the very small amount of traffic on their support forums and the seeming lack of people talking about the product. I don't think they have any kind of cloud-based analysis (could be wrong) or any type of reputation based analysis going on.

    They do seem to be a well run operation judging from the news coming out of their company. Somehow, I keep expecting them to be bought out by another company. They have been around a while so I suppose if that was going to happen it would have already.
     
  18. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2014
    Posts:
    1,013
    Interesting, since they're using it, do you mind posting a screeshot of the main GUI let me see if they fixed their old mess where if you were looking at the GUI in a non mazimized Window, part of the other widgets on the main GUI are not scaled / aligned properly?

    According to AVC they aren't doing so great as they did before as we see 91% detection rate but still not bad as some stuff were user dependent:

    http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php
     
  19. hamlet

    hamlet Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Posts:
    229
    Yes, they fixed the non-maximized window some months ago. That was a very silly GUI problem and I am glad they fixed it. Below is a screen shot of the current BullGuard Internet Security interface with all the components turned on. I am really running it with only the antivirus and the firewall turned on as shown in the second screen shot. I probably don't need the firewall but that makes it very easy to see what programs are running and to control their connections. The firewall is very good about showing a notice when allowing known programs and asking about unknown programs.

    You can also see that my subscription does not include the last two components, social media protection and identity protection. I am not interested in those features so it is a bit obnoxious that they are there.

    All in all, this is one funky interface. I much prefer an interface like ESET.

    bullguard1.png

    Here is shot of how I am running it with most of the parts turned off. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn off the parental control, but you can just leave it with no profile configured and it doesn't seem to affect anything.

    bullguard2.png
     
  20. hamlet

    hamlet Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Posts:
    229
    Also, BullGuard has had some really high user dependent decision scores in the AV-C tests lately. That is a bit concerning but I have never had it pop up and ask about anything. Of course, I am a pretty safe browser and also haven't had BullGuard loaded up much lately. I really prefer ESET but do now find my computer to be a bit snappier with BullGuard loaded. If they would just tone down that interface ... Ugh.
     
  21. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2014
    Posts:
    1,013
    That's one thing I hate about some AVs......they have let's see 3 products, an AV, an IS, and a Total Security......so you only want the AV and purchae a license for that......when you launch the GUI, you see other features not pertaining to your license and if you click on the button it redirects you to their site to upgrade! I specifically didn't ask for that feature!! don't show it to me!

    One thing nice about Panda is the GUI is customizable, as in, you can actually remove those buttons of features you won't use so you never see them in your way......
     
  22. atriks

    atriks Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2010
    Posts:
    6
    I have Bullguard Internet Security, and social media protection and identity protection do not show up on my interface.

    http://postimg.org/image/m4ypvz3t3/
     
  23. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2014
    Posts:
    1,013
    ok great, might have to give the AV only a spin sometime to see how it goes. Thanks
     
  24. hamlet

    hamlet Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Posts:
    229
    Well, I have switched back to ESET after a few day test of BullGuard. It runs quite nicely on my computer and probably gives me all the protection that I need but I have more trust in ESET. I just can't get on board completely with BullGuard since there always seems to be something that creates a little uncertainty in my mind about the quality or long term viability of the product. The latest thing that concerns me is that it appears as if their support forums are full of spam. I think it has been that way for a few days now and they don't seem to be doing anything to fix it. I feel like they should either run a quality forum or just shut the thing down. Also, if they don't care about their official forum, it makes you wonder what else they are taking short cuts with.

    Hmmm, it looks like all their forums have been over run with spam. At least, I assume it is spam. See the page at http://www.bullguard.com/forum/forum
     
  25. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2008
    Posts:
    10,239
    Location:
    Lloegyr
    There seems to be a bit of a spate of Chinese spam in forums at the moment. The Ubuntu forums gets it occasionally, but they delete it pretty rapidly.
     
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.