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What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

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Curt:
PCTools are mailing me quite often to have me renew my Spyware Doctor license. The price has gone down to $20, instead of the normal $30. Only; I have been a little annoyed by the program. I think it far too often has been taking up too much CPU at the wrong time, delaying the wrong programs for too long. And once, but only once, it gave me a false positive, luring me to remove a perfectly harmless program. But then again; when it comes to this kind of safeness I very often would like to wear both belt and suspenders
- so what are your thoughts about this Doctor: is he worth a renewal?
 :tellme:



[Edit: I should of course tell that I have Outpost Pro, NOD32, Add-Aware 2007 Plus, and some anti-rootkits!
I am not asking for you to decide for me; I am merely asking: What do you think of Spyware Doctor?]

Wordzilla:
IMO it's an effective anti-spyware, however I'm afraid it's way too bloated for my taste.

Just look at how long it takes for it to cold start... And better not enable those resident real-time protection stuff if you don't have a high-end system.

As a strict on-demand scanner it works pretty well for me.

Curt:
Yes; it starts incredible slow! But isn't the real-time protection one of the main reasons for having this program? I am not sure how effecient the on-demand scanner in Outpost Pro is, but it is there. If on-demand scanning was the only use I think I would stick to Outpost. I was always using Spyware Doctor as real-time protector.

Do you really need the Doctor if you are only using him on demand? Does it perform this much better than i.e. the free plugin for Outpost?

Wordzilla:
Well I have tried quite a few free/commercial anti-spyware before (including all of the popular alternatives) - none of them trumped Spyware Doctor in terms of detection AND removal of spyware.

A few months ago I was annoyed to death by those "You have been infected by ..." false alarms popping up every few minutes, and that was when I clearly realized some crap infected my system (not just a routine check revealing problems).

I remember Ad-aware reported all clear, Mcafee + antispyware plugin failed to remove the thingy - and spyware doctor killed the bastard without trouble, on its first try.

Carol Haynes:
I have licenses for both Spyware Doctore and Webroot Spy Sweeper.

They both seem pretty effective at what they do but both are resource hogs. I have finally settled on Spy Sweeper for day to day use because it is marginally less heavy on resources.

I just really wish we could have some giant scum filter in the internet that sucks up the crappy idiots who force everyone to buy these applications and degrade systems this much just to feel safe online.

Sometimes it makes you wonder who gains by internet scumware - strikes me all the companies producing firewalls, spyware, trojans, rootkits and viruses have a vested interest in making sure the level of attack is maintained on the web. But I am probably just a bit paranoid.

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