Sunbelt Vipre 3.1 Beta [New Anti Spyware + Anti Virus]

[Unto Darkness]

Sunbelt, the company behind the popular CouterSpy Anti Spyware software, has decided to enter the Anti Malware sector with their new product Vipre.

From Softpedia:

VIPRE is a completely new, built-from-scratch antivirus and antispyware product. The antivirus engine is Sunbelt's own creation, not licensed from another company. It has been a major undertaking, consuming millions of dollars in R&D costs and thousands of man-hours.

The technology itself is next-generation, incorporating a completely new architecture that combines antispyware, antivirus, antirootkit and other technologies into a seamless, tightly-integrated product.

It's very fast and very tight on resources. One of the reasons we decided to "build our own" was because of the enormous performance penalty of cobbling together an antivirus and antispyware engine together. It is one of the fastest products of its class (I suspect it's actually the fastest, but we haven't done the final benchmark tests). The definition database structure is also

completely different than what we have in the current version of CounterSpy. It is considerably smaller and more efficient.

VIPRE is not a "suite" per se — the first release is a combined antivirus and antispyware product. However, Sunbelt Software does plan on tightly incorporating our Sunbelt Personal Firewall code into a future release, providing complete firewall, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention capabilities, in addition to antivirus and antispyware.

There will be a new version of CounterSpy as well (version 3.0), which will be a subset of VIPRE (VIPRE is technically a superset of CounterSpy, so you do not need CounterSpy running on your system if you have VIPRE.)

Enterprise versions of CounterSpy and VIPRE will be following several weeks after the release of the consumer products.

More information can be found on their blog

Download Beta [3.1.1997]

Here are some screenshots, courtesy of Softpedia:

My Opinion:

- Installation:

Installation went smoothly, no hiccups there. Like all security products, it would ask you to restart your computer. Then you will have to update your risk definitions. It would also add a second to your start time, which is not too much.

It seems that it will encounter problems if Windows Defender is installed and gives you the option of disabling it. It also allows you to integrate with Windows' Security Center.

It will occupy ~ 20 MB of your Hard Disk's space. Uninstallation was equally smooth.

- Interface:

The interface is very well organised. The main page tells you all you need to know. However, I don't think the "World wide threat level" is required, for me at least. It is very user friendly and first time users or novice computer users will feel comfortable with the interface. Refer to the screenshots for a glimpse of the interface.

- Updates:

Updates would take some time to download, because there would be a lot of them. However, you can choose to make "incremental updates", which would complete the update process by downloading them at intervals. That is good thinking.

- Scanning:

Well the Quick Scan was very quick [took 36 sec to scan 5 GB], although it only scanned my Windows Installation, cookies and my registry, and not my personal files. You can't configure it unfortunately.

The in depth scan took 14 min and 4 sec to scan ~ 20GB, which is excellent.

I will leave it to "the pros" to do the detection tests. I know my system is clean so no false positives were returned during the scan.

You also have a custom scan option, which is essential to every Anti Malware product.

- Resource Usage:

Vipre will add a second to your OS start up time. It will also place a tray icon for easy access to Vipre. When idle, it runs the following processes:

SBAMSvc.exe ----- ~ 12 MB

SBAMTray.exe ----- ~ 6 MB

sbamui.exe ----- ~ 6MB [when the window is active]

Total = ~24 MB [compared to NOD32's 28 MB (Kernel) + 5 MB (UI)]

When doing an in depth scan, it used around an average of 42% of my CPU.

Overall, I can safely say that their statements are justified and Vipre does not hog your system, a problem so common with many Anti Virus products.

- Feature set:

This product come along with a file shredder, history eraser and a computer explorer, which are pretty nifty features. Remember, this is only an Anti Malware product and not a security suite, so don't expect a firewall, Anti Spam etc. It also comes with E - mail scanning.

PROS:

- Good interface

- Good scanning times

- Doesn't "hog" your system

- Good feature set

CONS:

- It doesn't add a "Scan this file with Vipre" option when you right click a file

My System:

OS: Windows XP Home

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 Extreme [HT Supported] 3.0GHz

RAM: 1 GB

Edited March 10, 2008 by Unto Darkness

[CoolCatBad]

I think they should have just released the AV as freeware, like AVG and Avast.

Good way of gaining credibility and offering a gateway to their fuller-featured commercial products. As it is, I can't see people dumping their trusted security suite software for something that appears out of nowhere.

[Hurmoth]

[Moved from SD&A to BPN]

[Tokar]

I think they should have just released the AV as freeware, like AVG and Avast.

Good way of gaining credibility and offering a gateway to their fuller-featured commercial products. As it is, I can't see people dumping their trusted security suite software for something that appears out of nowhere.

It certainly would help. Their software is in the realm of "too-complicated-for-the-average-user". It doesn't bode well considering that average users generate all the money through licenses. You really aren't going to make much money off of people who know what they are doing on a computer.

[mtrftw]

I think they should have just released the AV as freeware, like AVG and Avast.

Good way of gaining credibility and offering a gateway to their fuller-featured commercial products. As it is, I can't see people dumping their trusted security suite software for something that appears out of nowhere.

Sunbelt isn't an out of nowhere company. They're active in the anti-spyware community and counterspy has been around for a long time.

[Tokar]

Sunbelt isn't an out of nowhere company. They're active in the anti-spyware community and counterspy has been around for a long time.

Yeah and they add thousands of new defs each day...but it gets them no where. I never see them mentioned in any major antispy comparisons in the major tech mags, nor do I see them mentioned in antispyware news on the web.

[alexeck]

Yeah and they add thousands of new defs each day...but it gets them no where. I never see them mentioned in any major antispy comparisons in the major tech mags, nor do I see them mentioned in antispyware news on the web.

I'm not sure where you get that idea. CounterSpy was the PC World Best Buy a few years back:

http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=119572&...t&zoomIdx=1

And it's won Editor's Choice at CNET this year:

http://reviews.cnet.com/antivirus-and-filt...7-31232203.html

PC Mag didn't give it a bad review last year:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2255856,00.asp

At any rate, VIPRE is now released, and PC Mag just reviewed it:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,23265...2129TX1K0000530

[tsupersonic]

PCWorld, CNET, PCMag? :laugh: People actually believe those sources?

And you just registered to post those links? Wow. Just wow.

[alexeck]

PCWorld, CNET, PCMag? :laugh: People actually believe those sources?

And you just registered to post those links? Wow. Just wow.

Err yeah, sorry, I should have made my bias clear. I work for Sunbelt and felt compelled to respond to Tokar's statement that "I never see them mentioned in any major antispy comparisons in the major tech mags, nor do I see them mentioned in antispyware news on the web." But Tokar has a point, we haven't done nearly as much work as we should to get the word out about our company and products.

I hope no one took offense to the post.

[zerologic]

Welcome to last week!

Already posted. And it's not Beta anymore. :sleep:

[wellofsouls]

PCWorld, CNET, PCMag? :laugh: People actually believe those sources?

And you just registered to post those links? Wow. Just wow.

well maybe no one believes them, but they are still "major tech mags", so it's a valid counter-argument to "I never see them mentioned in any major antispy comparisons in the major tech mags, nor do I see them mentioned in antispyware news on the web." ;)

[Yinchie]

Tried Vipre and don't like it.

For the reason that it slow downs games, big fps loss and hick ups whenever you move around in the game - like a string is pulling you back and fort.

Speaking about World of Warcraft.

Running Vista Home Premium 64bit SP1

4 GB DDR2 memory, Intel Core 2 Duo E8400.

Asus P5H Deluxe motherboard.

nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX videocard.

Also noticed some small slowdowns while multitasking on my system, like opening files and such are slower.

[alexeck]

Tried Vipre and don't like it.

For the reason that it slow downs games, big fps loss and hick ups whenever you move around in the game - like a string is pulling you back and fort.

Speaking about World of Warcraft.

Ouch, that's not good. Was this on the release version or the earlier beta?

We'll take a look asap, it should not be conflicting with WoW.