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PRODUCT SCORE
60%
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Product Name | Spyware Remover |
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System | Windows 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, Vista |
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Price | $19.95 / about £10 |
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Length of cover | 12 Months |
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What does this software do? | Spyware Remover scans your computer searches for any spyware that might be hiding on your system. After performing a scan it will show a list of the threats it uncovered 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 | Spyware Remover is a very attractive looking tool and some care has gone into making it look appealing. However this comes at a price. The window is non-resizable and users with higher resolutions might be squinting at some of the tiny fonts used here. But it does look sleek and it's easy to see what each function is meant to do. |
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Real time protection | After scanning your computer and removing spyware, Spyware Remover moves down to your system tray. The program continues to run in the background and offers some basic protection against incoming spyware as it happens. The protection you get is very basic and there's no way to know what you're being shielded from, or to alter settings. You've just got to trust it's doing a good job. Compared to some of the better tools I've tested, this protection is nowhere near good enough. |
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Product updates |
I was unable to find out from support how often definition updates are released for this product. I did ask twice but they were unable to provide an answer. From my own experience, the product updates didn't seem to be anywhere near frequent enough.
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Customer Support | I found that the customer support for this product was very quick. And the replies I got were fairly long. However, I didn't manage to get the answer to some of the questions I had. I didn't feel like they were reading my questions or that they even spoke (wrote) very good English. |
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What I liked |
Clear, easy to use interface
Despite the sluggish program performance (mentioned below) the interface looks great. It's really easy to use and it's highly unlikely you'll spend any time in the help files. Clearly labeled buttons makes it clear where everything is, and what each function does. Good progress meters There's two 'progress complete' bars that you get when running a scan: one which shows the current scan job and another that shows the total progress completed so far. And the scan time seemed really quick too. You can see exactly how long each scan will take with these progress bars - an important requirement that many spyware programs seem to overlook. |
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What I didn't like |
Sluggish program performance
Compared to all of the other spyware cleaners I've been testing, this tool didn't run smoothly on my PC (which is a relatively new PC that runs all the big applications without problems). Changing screens on the software, or dragging the window about, had a noticeable lag. And while running the scan it was impossible to work on anything else. No explanation of the threats that were found This was one of the few tools I've found that doesn't provide any explanation in the software as to what each problem uncovered on your PC is. There wasn't even any external links from the software to learn more about what each threat meant. It's a case of having to blindly trust the software again. This is a major oversight. No indication of threat level On the scan results page there's no clues given to the severity of each threat. A keylogger is given the exact same colour and appearance as say a comparatively harmless tracking cookie. Strange selection of additional tools Spyware Remover comes with several additional tools that feel out of place here. There's an Add/Remove programs manager, a startup manager and a registry backup tool. They feel slightly tagged on and would be more at home in a registry scanner. I would have preferred to see more ways to customize the realtime protection. |
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Strengths |
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Weaknesses |
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The verdict | Spyware Remover isn't the worst tool you could buy, and it's price tag is very appealing. But at the same time it's sluggish operation, lack of good reporting, and the very basic level of realtime protection make it one you'll want to leave on the shelf. For an extra ten dollars, you can get a lot more for your money. |
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Refund details | This product comes with a complete 8 week money-back guarantee. |
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