Lavasoft Ad-aware Standard Edition 6.0
Venerable Ad-aware has gone corporate, with a stylish new Web site and a steep pricing structure to match. The makers of Ad-aware have become so complacent about their spot at the top of the ad-blocking food chain that they've adopted the rather cavalier motto: "Ad-aware, the morning-after pill for the Internet." While the free version, Ad-aware Standard Edition, remains successfully focused on removing ad-serving software from your registry, that's about all it does.
Ad-aware Standard Edition 6.0 is no match for the newly released, feature-rich, and free Spybot Search and Destroy, which includes a secure file shredder and a way to opt out of junk mail. If you want the ability to stop pop-up ads, Trojan horses, and other maladies of the Internet--tasks that Spybot handles just fine for free--you'll need to spend US$40 for the Ad-aware Professional 6.0 version. Your best bet: save the US$40 and get Spybot for free.
The free version of 6.0 is available only as a 1.45MB download. After an easy installation, the new version of Ad-aware keeps its familiar and intuitive interface. To begin scanning your hard drive, for example, simply click the Start button, and Ad-aware will scan your hard drive and registry looking for advertising-related spy programs. You can customize its scan by selecting additional drives, and/or excluding registry items. Unlike Spybot, which required us to first check for product updates, then confirm our settings, then figure out how to start the darn thing, Ad-aware is ready to remove ad-serving software from your PC right away.
Unfortunately, not all of Ad-aware is so easy to understand. The function, for instance, of the Quarantine button and icon on the interface is unclear. Here's the scoop: Ad-aware automatically creates a quarantine file, which contains apps that the program has removed from your PC, each time you complete the scanning process. The Quarantine feature is helpful only if you want to restore a previously deleted ad-serving software program, should you discover that another software app is dependent on it. Spybot at least warns you that removing ad-serving software could impair freeware apps that you may have installed, while Ad-aware does not.
Compared to feature-rich Spybot, Ad-aware Standard Edition offers very few tools. Unlike Spybot, Ad-aware lacks a shredder to securely delete your files, nor does it offer additional-information pop-up windows to explain each ad-serving software app that it finds. There is no listing of company opt-out e-mail address to stop the flow of junk mail associated with ad-serving software vendors. What you see in Ad-aware Standard Edition is what you get--it's a program to hunt down ad-serving software on your hard drive, and that's all.
The Status button on Ad-aware's left-hand navigation bar shows the date of your last update and the number of objects that Ad-aware has quarantined on your PC. Under the Scan Now button, the free version allows you to customize only a few of the settings (most of which are dimmed in favor of the paid version). While you can get quite granular on which files you'd like the software to scan, you'll also grow annoyed at the range of useful options that are inaccessible to you, such as the ability to remove known advertising URLs added without your permission to your Internet Explorer Favorites list.
Even worse, Ad-aware's best feature, AdWatch, which stops pop-ups from invading your computer, is unavailable in the Standard Edition. Although you can still find information about it in the help file, clicking its icon or button will only display a message that asks you to upgrade for this feature. In general, we don't like this form of advertising.
Lavasoft, which makes Ad-aware and is located in Sweden, offers a more detailed and complete help file for Ad-aware than PepiMK Software does for its Spybot product. However, most of the detailed items in the Ad-aware help file are for features that are not available in the free version.
Also, a few items within Ad-aware's help file simply default to Ad-aware's main Welcome page. The Web site includes FAQs, but most of them advertise the features found in the paid version. You'll find an online help forum and e-mail-based technical support, but be warned: our technical-support test question went unanswered for several days.
Lavasoft Ad-aware Standard Edition 6.0
Company: Lavasoft
Price: Free for download, Professional Edition US$40 via download only
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i have an old version of Spybot and it works like a dream but all it displays is what it's filtering out in about a minute thirty it blinks then its done is this right?