CounterSpy Review

Summary

Antispyware software has taken centre stage lately with spyware becoming just as harmful a threat as viruses. Ad Aware and Spyware Doctor have established quite a name for themselves in this industry however Sunbelt Software has put together a powerful antispyware solution as well.

Review Details

• Company – Sunbelt Software
• Operating System – XP
• Version – 3.0.6

Application Ratings

• Interface – 7/10
• Ease of use – 9/10
• Memory Usage – 5/10
• Popularity – 6/10
• Price(~$20.00) – 10/10
• Speed – 4/10
• Spyware detection rate – 10/10
• Help and Support – 10/10

Review

• Interface – 7/10

CounterSpy’s interface is ok, nothing to complain about and nothing to be impressed about either, IMO the color combination is boring, it’s primary color is grey, you’d expect an antivirus/spyware program to concentrate its color scheme on a blue or green and if you look at the grey color scheme in an ‘innovative’ sense CounterSpy’s interface would score there. Also the overall combination of colors is easy on the eye, that and  the uniformity would give CounterSpy a reasonable 7/10 for interface.

• Ease of use – 9/10

CounterSpy like most other anti-malware software is quite easy to use, user-friendliness is a fundamental part of these software as they are used by virtually any computer user and CounterSpy has pretty much sorted that out too. Counterspy is separated into appropriately labeled tabs, icons and text providing a setup that any noob should be able to figure out the works for. The one thing missing would be tool-tip text to further explain any available features however the icons and labels should be sufficient for the average computer user.

• Memory Usage – 5/10

CounterSpy follows the theme that most other anti-malware products in the market tend to show when it comes to memory usage. It does a good job, on standby, realtime protection doesn’t really strain the system, the application launches in just a few seconds (you hear that Firefox?) so running CounterSpy on startup doesn’t really affect the startup time of your computer that much.

It is scanning that drains your computer off its resources. While it doesn’t really consume too much memory it uses up all the CPU almost completely crippling you of multi tasking during the scan. Thankfully they have conveniently provided the ‘pause’ feature if you need to really use your computer in the middle of a scan. This is one of the main weaknesses of the application.

• Popularity – 6/10

CounterSpy surfaced as reputed software good enough to compete with the market leaders only recently thus popularity is still in progress. With time, based on the potential it has, it should rise in popularity.

• Price(~$20) – 10/10

This is one of the main pros behind the application. CounterSpy has a price tag of $19.95 which is a lot more economical than its competition, most other antispyware solutions are in the $30-$40 range, relatively CounterSpy is a lot more cheaper giving it the edge with its competition.

• Speed – 4/10

CounterSpy takes a painfully long time to perform a full system scan, this is another drawback of the program, however long scan times are common with antispyware/virus programs and is something that needs to be addressed with the developers with most computer tasks today performed pretty much instantly.

• Spyware detection rate – 10/10

I am a heavy surfer and have used CounterSpy long enough and it has done a great job at keeping the usual tracking cookies away as well as other more harmful spyware threats. With CounterSpy you can feel quite safe online as far as spyware is concerned.

• Help and Support – 10/10

CounterSpy provides ample help and support with the product. While by default, the application is very easy to use and pretty much self explanatory already, it is packaged with a comprehensive help file, they also have a knowledge base online, a support forum and also live online help via chat so you can’t really ask for much more than that.

Overall

CounterSpy is not the best solution by any means, however with its very competitive price and very satisfactory detection rate I would still highly recommend this software.

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Ad Aware SE Review

 

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Review

 

McAfee Anti-Virus Review

 

AVS Video Tools Review

 

 

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