SOFTWARE REVIEW

Ad-aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 review

7.7

Editors' Rating

Bruce Stewart CNET

Published: 17 Jun 2005

Ad-aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 is the latest version of Lavasoft's popular free antispyware program, and not surprisingly, it continues to meet the high standards that Ad-aware is known for. Long considered the grandfather of antispyware programs, Ad-aware keeps getting better and is one of our recommended additions to any desktop.

This latest version of Ad-aware SE runs faster than its predecessors, and it finds and deletes even more illicit programs that track your surfing and cause many of those annoying pop-up ads. With its light use of resources and thorough scans, Ad-aware also beats paid antispyware programs, such as McAfee AntiSpyware. In addition to providing a more robust scanning engine, Ad-aware now sports a sleek new interface that makes the program more attractive and extremely simple to use. Ad-aware's custom skins let you change the look and feel of the program in a variety of ways.

Downloading and installing Ad-aware SE Personal took only a few minutes. It's best to run a full system scan the first time you use Ad-aware. After that, it's much faster to use the Smart Scan option, which checks only files that have recently changed on your hard drive. Ad-aware is highly configurable, with more options and choices than you'd expect in a free spyware-removal program. The default settings work great with most systems, though, and unless you have an unusual situation, you shouldn't have to fiddle with any settings.

If you've been using your PC on the Internet without any spyware protection, you'll probably be amazed at how many offending programs Ad-aware finds. Unfortunately, the process of removing offending applications with Ad-aware can be confusing at times because Ad-aware doesn't provide much helpful information about the suspect spyware it marks for quarantine. For example, it doesn't identify which applications might need a suspected spyware/adware component in order to run. But don't worry, Ad-aware doesn't entirely remove the spyware: it just quarantines it in a secure folder, so if for some reason you actually needed one of those adware components, you could easily reinstall it later within Ad-aware.

Our only gripe is regarding Lavasoft's paltry support options. Email technical support is not available for the free version, and the support area on Lavasoft's Web site is underwhelming to say the least. That said, the program is pretty easy to use and the integrated help system is complete and should be able to answer most questions.

You can download Ad-aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 here.