About a year ago, Sunbelt Software famous for their Counter-Spy product developed a totally new anti-virus engine from scratch - now they have released it under the name VIPRE for public beta. It all began when they realized that they needed an even powerful anti-malware technology. VIPRE is said to employ very powerful heuristic detection engine in addition to Sunbelt’s kernel-level active protection and FirstScan technology.
Since it is still in its beta stages, we wouldn’t be having a very comprehensive review on Sunbelt VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware Beta. Read on for views on this product.
VIPRE Installation
We downloaded the VIPRE installation file from the Sunbelt Forum - Beta Section (18Mb). Installation went smoothly. After that we were presented with a wizard to configure a couple of settings.
- Setting the internet proxy
- Set update settings
- Set active protection to high/medium/low
- Set email protection - add scanned by to e-mail
- Join Threatnet - a Sunbelt community
- Set scan schedule
- Integrate windows security center
- Disable Windows Defender
- Register
- Download definitions update
You can change this settings at a later date.
Program User Interface
*This review is for the BETA version of VIPRE, do not take this as a review for the latest version of VIPRE.
The VIPRE program user interface is very easy to navigate around. You won’t see any of the very advanced anti-virus settings you see in other anti-virus programs. Basically we just leave it running in the background unless we opt to do a manual system scan. The simple user interface doesn’t do a well job of portraying the full capabilities of VIPRE - we didn’t feel very secure.
However there are times when the program isn’t responsive - sometimes when we click on the VIPRE tray icon to bring up the program, the program just doesn’t pull up to the desktop. This prevents me from doing any action like scanning. We found out that if the tray icon changes to green, there’s no way to access to the program. We can only access it when it is blue in color. A system restart seems to fix the problem although it is not an ideal solution.
At times also, the VIPRE engine just deactivates and we can’t enable it back. This problem is a major setback.
Features and Performances
Besides the anti-virus features, VIPRE has integrated three useful tools which are Secure File Eraser, History Cleaner and PC Explorer. You basically use Secure File Eraser when you need to delete a certain confidential file - it makes sure that the information will never able to be retrieve by any means. In History Cleaner, it lists out all the programs which its temporary files is able to be cleared. Sadly, Internet Explorer is the only browser it cleans. For the a dedicated cleaner, we recommend using CCleaner. Okay, in PC Explorer, you can view and identify manually if there is any suspicious processes on your system through different areas - Downloaded ActiveX, Internet Applications, Running Processes, Startup Programs and a few other more. But the problem kicks in when we want to scan for a specific process we identify on the list, there wasn’t any button for us to do that. The only way to scan that process it to find it manually and initiate a scan.
The next problem with VIPRE is that you can’t initiate a scan directly to one file. You can only initiate a scan on a folder. therefore the file you intended to scan need to be resided in a folder and if the folder so happen to contain huge number of files, the scanning time would take longer period. And since you want to save time, you try to move it in a completely new folder but what if the file can’t be moved because the system is currently using the file - you just got to lived with a long scan period. A bad idea by Sunbelt.
Regarding the scanning performance, VIPRE clocked at 7.35 minutes for 10358 files (mixture of installation file and text file) which sums up to 4.79Gb. Perhaps the scanning speed is just at an average speed. During the scan, it initially uses 30-60% of CPU resources but later increases to around 80-90%.
Memory wise, VIPRE uses around 38Mb of RAM. It is not so taxing to the system.
However, the thing we were not satisfied is the update definition process. It’s took very long unlike other anti-virus which can be updated under a minute period.
VIPRE has rootkit detection but you have to manually enable it when doing a custom scan. We can’t say much about VIPRE detection engine because we installed VIPRE on a live user system which we try not to make it infested.
Take note that, we do not recommend installing VIPRE Beta version on a live system - this is strictly for testing purposes only.
Sunbelt Software’s Response to this Review
We received an e-mail from Ms. Laurie, Marketing Communication Manager of Sunbelt Software and she would like to clear you guys up on some of the mentioned issues above.
- Sunbelt VIPRE Anti-virus 3.1.2036 Beta was NOT publicly available for download.
- Since this was not a publicly available build we cannot say for sure what caused these instability issues. What we can say is that this is not found in the latest beta.
- We agree that we need a single file scanner. There are plans to include this later.
- In the newest betas we are not seeing these same cpu resource issues.
- We are currently doing full database updates in beta. We have not moved to incremental yet so updates are not as optimized as you might expect them to be.
The latest version 3.1.0.2068 is proven to be stable after a week of testing.
Anything on Vipre doing a firewall?
They might eventually integrate Sunbelt Personal Firewall into a suite with VIPRE.
Users reading this review should not take this BETA version review as a comparison to the recently released VIPRE.
Dr. Safemode would perform a new review in weeks to come for the latest VIPRE released.
Vipre sucks it wont let me download anything even it is safe it keeps blocking everything and it put a virus on my computer and totally messed it up!!!!
Vipre has some serious problems with detecting some of the siple virus that are out there currently. I had a virus that put a “_desktop.ini” file in every one of my directories and VIPRE ANTIVIRUS did not stop, prevent or fix the problem! I finally purchased McAfree and this solved the problem. The worst part about this is the told me to e-mail them the file but my home e-mail address is from Comcast. You can not send them and e-mail with the word “cast” in the content. What moron tells you to e-mail them when you can’t. The tech support is not tech support. It is an idoit hold a phone reading from a script. I suggest you stay away from this antivirus software.
Well VIPRE doing really a great job in my 2 PCs at home! I recommended to all. Trust me
I installed VIPRE awhile ago–I was not impressed so I took it off my add/remove programs. I want to know why and how I can get rid of it totally. It keeps coming on my computer when I start it up. I WANT IT OFF TOTALLY. I am not a computer whiz-so I don’t know what to do–PLEASE HELP ME. THANK YOU LOTS!!!
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I HAD VIPRE FOR A YEAR MY BROTHER DOWNLOADED IT. AND WHEN IT RAN OUT
I BOUGHT THE TWO YEAR PLAN, TWO DAYS LATER, A VIRUS WIPED OUT
EVERYTHING, ALL MY DOWNLOADED GAMES ALL MY E-MAILS EVERYTHING.
IT COST ME PLENTY TO GET IT FIXED AND I NEED A NEW HARD DRIVE
AS WELL, VIPRE STINKS, OBVIOUSLY. TO BAD I CAN’T MAKE THEM PAY
FOR WHAT IT COST ME TO FIX. SANDIE
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