Lavasoft is one of the pioneers of this type of scanning technology. The company has specialised in this area for a number of years. Originally focusing on assisting home and small businesses to cope with malware problems, Lavasoft has now expanded and created this professional edition of its application with a number of features that may make it attractive to some corporates.
The Ad-Aware product has been around for a very long time and Lavasoft, like Pest Patrol, has great experience in targeting pop-up advertisements and spyware specifically. It would be a safe bet that when most tech-savvy people think about spyware issue it is Ad-Aware or Pest Patrol that first come to mind.
With virtually the same interface across all its products, each Ad-Aware version basically adds more levels of features and functionality. This makes the proposition very attractive for administrators who have possibly already been using and are familiar with other versions of the Ad-Aware family.
Administration in the professional edition -- as to be expected -- is slightly more complicated than the other versions, but it's nothing a competent administrator couldn't get their head around in a matter of minutes. The user interface, while neatly laid out and pleasing to the eye, at times seems a little too vague. For corporate applications one would expect a more functional or direct interface. There is also no facility for scanning multiple target machines on the network from the one system. However, development is in progress to enable network features -- this will undoubtedly win a lot of business once it is included in a release. There is a workaround: you can use a centralised logfile repository and a centralised definitions file to save the network team from having to ensure that all machines are up to date individually. These settings are accessed via the General Settings tab on the configuration window.
This product is feature-rich and well-developed, but due to the lack of ability to scan multiple target machines from the one system, the application might be better suited to smaller offices where the administration burden of semi-centralised applications is not so high.
 |
|
|
|||
| |||||
| Product | Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Professional Edition |
| Price | Price variable according to number of seats (starts at US$39.95) |
| Vendor | Nicolas Stark Computing AB (Lavasoft) |
| Phone | +46 5155 0300 |
| Web | www.lavasoft.de |
| Interoperability |  ½ |
| Very straightforward user interface for a standalone application quite a lot of additional bells and whistles (worthwhile staying tuned for the network version that is in progress). | |
| Futureproofing |  |
| Great array of features for a standalone application. | |
| ROI |
|
| Business licences start at US$39.95 per seat with price breaks for quantity which is a very good price considering the feature set. | |
| Service | 
½ |
| 12 months appears to be the standard warranty with all these applications which is very good for software applications in general. | |
| Rating | 
|
Nastyware - a collective descriptive term...