Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Professional

Lavasoft helped to kick-start the anti-spyware business a decade ago, and its combination of regular updates, a free basic product and little competition meant it dominated the industry for years. It hasn't had its own way recently, though: Spybot-Search & Destroy proved tough competition in the free sector, while Webroot had the advantage on the commercial front. With this latest release, however, Lavasoft is fighting back.

Many of its features are aimed at the expert. We liked the ability to unload running process modules to combat DLL-injection threats, and the links to the Threat Assessment Chart online service were helpful in understanding more about individual threats. There are add-ons available that will view Layered Service Providers to check for malicious code inserted into Windows' TCP/IP chain by other software (which can then intercept all your Internet traffic), highly detailed file information viewers and even a hex viewer should you feel the need to inspect your spyware that closely. None disguise the unwieldy nature of the interface, though.

Despite the Code Sequence Identification (CSI) technology to protect against unknown variants of known threats, and the real-time protection of the Ad-Watch module to monitor suspicious processes, Ad-Aware performed poorly in our tests: eighth for both detection and blocking, and only sixth for removal. System performance also took a nose dive during scanning. When coupled to a lack of scheduling (it's on demand or on booting only) and the high price, we simply can't recommend Ad-Aware in this company.