Ad Aware SE Review

By Luqmaan

Company – Lavasoft

Operating System – Windows(all)

Brief summary – One of the best, most popular anti spyware solutions available today.

General Ratings:

Interface – 4/5
Ease of use – 5/5
Memory Usage – 5/5
Popularity – 5/5
Price of Pro version (~$50.00) – 4/5
No. of bugs – 5/5

Software specific ratings:

Full scan duration (5 – 15 minutes) – 5/5
Memory usage during scan – 3/5
Updates – 4/5
Detection rate – 5/5

Rating Description

Interface

While the world of software may have seen programs with a more stylish appearance Ad aware consists of a simple and easy to use interface which doesn’t look to bad either. With the well known tabbed style interface aligned to the left, and other important parts of the application like configuration, and help placed at the top of the program.

Ease of use

An easy to use application which uses simple terms and phrases.

Memory Usage

Takes up barely any memory while monitoring with the Ad-Watch (PRO version only) tool. The main application takes a few moments to start which is negligible in most cases.

Popularity

Known in the net as an excellent, trustable application, which has gained reputation quickly as a very good spyware cleaning tool.

Price

While the free version is suitable for most people (where if used would be advisable to scan the computer after a session of surfing as it does not support real-time protection), it may not be sufficient for some and rightfully so with spyware virtually dominating the internet today with tracking cookies (the most common form of spyware) and so on. In this case the professional version, suitable for home and office use, would be a good option. With a reasonable price of $50, the shield your computer will have would be sufficient to defend even the most brutal types of spyware.

Bugs

Virtually bug free.

Full scan duration

The scanning duration of this range (5 – 15 minutes), is the general range that a good spyware application would take to perform a full scan.

Memory usage during scan

This is one of the main problems of the application, while other tasks could be done in the process of scanning; it takes a while to shift between other applications, especially from the ad aware application itself to another task. It would be best to wait the 10 minutes or so, and then continue with your tasks.

Updates

Updates come out consistently every 5 – 7 days, which could be downloaded via the program itself or externally from the ad aware and other third party sites. The update server is very fast and the update file is around 1.5 MB in size.

Detection rate

Well the best for the last. Whatever the spyware it may be, whether it’s popups, toolbars, browser hijacks or even just a tracking cookie you can be sure that ad aware will detect it.

Other details

Installer size – ~3MB

Installed directory size – ~8MB

Overall (5/5):

A great utility that won’t let your pc down. Trusted globally by millions of people as one of the best anti spyware utilities available.

Buy Ad Aware Pro

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