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PRODUCT SCORE
52%
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Product Name | Adware Alert |
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System | Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista |
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Price | $19.95 / about £10 |
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Length of cover | Lifetime |
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What does this software do? | Adware Alert scans your computer and hunts down any spyware that might be infecting it. After performing a scan it will show a list of the threats on your PC. You can then click a button to remove these problems. |
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Buying notes | The credit card payments for this product are handled by a company called Clickbank. They are a huge company with a track record spanning many years and offer excellent customer support. I've bought many products through this company and never had any problems. |
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First impressions | Installing Adware Alert was easy enough. But once it's up and running you might get a strong sense of dejavu. It's a spyware tool that's been released by many different companies under different names, with their own logo and graphics on it. The interface is fairly small but it's easy enough to see what each button does. |
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Real time protection | Adware Alert continues to run in the tray when you're finished scanning and protects against a number of common threats. I was unable to get a straight answer from the support as to which threats were covered by the protection. |
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Product updates |
I asked the support how often updates were but they were unable to give me an answer beyond that the software checks for updates each time it starts. When you consider that many tools offer daily updates to their spyware databases, this isn't really good enough.
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Customer Support | As well as email support, there's also live support. This is where a realtime chat window pops up and you can then get tech support online by typing questions. I did use this service and was able to talk briefly to a real person. The first person I spoke to was unable to answer a very basic question. They then got a technical expert, who didn't seem to know much more. The experience I had was frustrating. |
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What I liked |
Very simple, easy to use interface
While you can't resize the interface, the text isn't too small to read and everything is easily accessible from one panel. I'm confident anyone would be able to use this software. Very low price For under $20, this is certainly one of the cheapest spyware tools available. |
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What I didn't like |
No explanation of what each threat is
Yet another tool which expects users to blindly accept that the problems it found should be removed from the PC, without giving any sort of explanation why. There's just a long list of items that appear in the results window and no further information available. No indication of the severity of each threat Again, a common problem with spyware removal tools. There's no indication, graphical or otherwise, as to how severe each threat is. The most serious threats are all ranked the same as the minor problems. This is something that could have been done much better. No scheduler There's no way to schedule either when you want to perform updates, or when you want to perform a scan. Main button confusing Clicking on the main button began a scan straight away. As this is the first button most people will click on, expecting some kind of central control panel, this is sort of frustrating. |
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Strengths |
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Weaknesses |
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The verdict | This is another spyware scanner that promises the earth on it's homepage but severely under-delivers. How some sites can recommend this as the top product on the market completely baffling. The whole package, including the support, feels as if no one cares about it. It also feels very light on features and is very basic compared to some of the other tools I've tested. And the level of reporting is non-existent. Definitely one to avoid. |
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Refund details | This product comes with a complete 60 day money-back guarantee. |
Click Here To Order Adware Alert
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