It definitely slows down my machine in multiple scenarios. One thing you need to know about my writing was that it was fast and loose, and unzipping is a rather tangential problem that I happened to come across and insert at the time of the writing. My apologies for being more anecdotal than scientific.
If I am understanding you correctly, unzipping many smaller files should be quicker. If that is the case, then my experience unzipping this particular package proves that Defender is causing strain on my system, at least on the SSD and CPU. The more files the zip file has and the smaller they are, the slower the copying becomes; the LEDs blink, the fans whirl and the other components vibrate and buzz.
The most important thing to note is that the main process of Defender was at the top of the task manager list. That said, it doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it is quite obvious. In this particular case, the unzipping wasn’t too bad, it just took a very long time, because I have already tamed Defender somewhat but apparently, after a few recent updates, it is a bit fussier now.
To be clear: I don’t advise disabling Defender, as it is beneficial to most users. I would only do it to see if it is the cause of the system slowdown. I should probably add this to the main post!
Thanks for your feedback by the way. Let me know how I could make it more convincing. (I will try to make the illustration clearer and make some comparisons. Again, it is a tangential case, so I wouldn’t want to put too much stock in it.)
In general, I am not the best person to talk about this subject; but I saw the vacuum and Defender being brought up repeatedly, so I decided to start writing about it, hoping that smarter and clearer minds would chip in along the way.
Last thing I would say is that this is a common problem and it isn’t because of user inexperience or ignorance (okay, maybe a wee bit). A brief online search would yield plenty of results including ones on Microsoft’s own forums, to which its staff mostly refrain from being involved (because they either don’t want to acknowledge the problem or they are among the lucky few who don’t encounter it).
