FROSTY
Premium,MVM
join:2000-08-10
Pinson, AL
clubs: 
| I still think SpySweeper is the best
Eric's efforts are noteworthy and appreciated, yet I have to disagree with his test results. Show me a PC infested with over 100 distinct spyware programs, and I'll prove Spy Sweeper is the best.
I know from first hand experience SpySweeper detects and removes more spyware than SpyBot and Adware Pro combined. I've witnessed it too many times since March of this year. Many times Spybot and Adware will report the PC is clean, when Spysweeper detects at least 10 more spyware programs on the HDD or in the registry. Plus, Spysweepers UI is easy to use, and it's active shields are 10x better and easier to work with than Adware's. Sure it's a pay program, but it's worth it to me. To add to which, Webroot issued definition updates since yesterday which detects 33932 (previously some odd 31100) spyware traces, basically 2x the number Spybot detects (last time I checked). Eric should run his tests again. To each his own. 
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"When you set yourself on fire and aim for the sky, you hope to leave behind some sparks of heat and light ... Like a vapor trail." - Neil Peart 2002 |
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Tech-2005
@pacbell.n
| I would mostly have to agree with Frosty about SpySweeper since I also run SpySweeper along with Spybot, Ad-Aware SE, and Spywareblaster. This is an excellent combination of free and paid programs and I do like SpySweeper very much as it seems to be great at detecting all kinds of threats since it blocks tracking cookies, browser hijacking, and it has good real time spyware memory scanning.
If you were going to run a single program for Antispyware I might recommend SpySweeper. But if you don't mind dropping another thirty dollars I also highly recommend adding McAfee Antispyware 2005 to the mix since I have found it have some of the very best heuristics scanning and it can often detect especially evasive and dangerous keyloggers and other spyware that all of the other programs including SpySweeper completely fail to detect. |
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FROSTY
Premium,MVM
join:2000-08-10
Pinson, AL
clubs:
|  Thanks Tech-2005
About the only drawback to Spy Sweeper...
It's a memory hog. 17 MB on bootup/login.
Still, it's worth it.
Especially for those unfortunante users that have no clue or self-control. 
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"When you set yourself on fire and aim for the sky, you hope to leave behind some sparks of heat and light ... Like a vapor trail." - Neil Peart 2002 |
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Tech-2005
@pacbell.n
| Regarding Spy Sweeper being a memory hog: It does seem as though Webroot is suffering from mild "NAV syndrome" regarding memory and system resource usage. However, I would still trust using Spy Sweeper and NAV 2003 (or another more efficient AV program) in combination rather than running the stand alone version of NAV 2004 or 2005 with their questionable and mostly ineffective spyware detection schemes.
I noticed more of the memory hungry "NAV syndrome" in version 3.x of Spy Sweeper vs. version 2.6 . That is why on slower systems or ones with CPUs running under 1.5 Ghz or with only than 512MB RAM or less I tend to prefer to run McAfee Antispyware 2005 as a "real time" spyware scanner and I disable Spy Sweeper's real time memory scanning. I enable Sweeper's other real time protections like anti-hijack for the browser, tracking cookie blocking, etc. which are the areas that McAfee AS is lacking. I simply schedule weekly full system scans with Spy Sweeper so that its definitions do their detection work.
I actually have run both McAfee and Spy Sweeper's real time memory scanning at the same time but if you run any other memory intensive programs in the background it can promote random system instabilities and therefore I would only recommend this for much faster machines above 2.4 Ghz and with at least 1GB RAM. |
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