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Scanning

As has come to be expected from Lavasoft software, the scan menu is very easy to use. The simple mode launches a smart scan as soon as you click the scan system button, which in most cases is a great option, performing a fast scan which will do a fine job of worming out the main offenders. However, for those of us who feel safer performing a full scan on, say, a weekly basis (or more regularly) each scan is highly customisable – as seen below, you can specify which areas of your hard drive(s) you want scanned, right down to even individual folders. For example, an avid downloader (albeit legal or illegal!) may wish to have their downloads folder under rigorous supervision to catch intruders early.

I briefly mentioned above about regular checking, and while this may seem a standard feature for some (particularly for paid software, as this is) the scan scheduler function can sometimes go amiss. As one would expect, this is very simple to use – after creating the name of your new profile, you can specify which type of scan you want to perform, (smart, full or a ‘profile’ scan, again under your own terms) how regularly and at what time this should happen, and also, more importantly perhaps for the gamers, how any quarantined items should be dealt with.

As mentioned previously, one of the features that Ad-Aware advertise as being a unique selling point for this software above other alternatives is the ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode – i.e. the program will not interrupt you while in full screen mode, which could be a lifesaver (both figuratively and perhaps literally when in game!) for some users. Here, should you so wish, the program can be set to ‘perform recommended action’ when it encounters suspicious files, varying from ignoring, repairing to straight removal.

So, how does this make a difference to me?

A pop-up interrupting a full screen game, (where almost invariably the resolution will have changed) can severely break-up game play, and on older computers, even crash the system. As Ad-Aware suggested in their description of the product, this is often the reason why gamers choose to make their system vulnerable to malicious attacks by disabling their anti-spyware/firewall etc because of the interruptions and system lag. Ad-Aware Game Edition is true to its word in this respect, and after a lengthy session on the RPG/RTS Demigod, I was somewhat satisfied to see the notification from the program telling me that I ‘had two notifications ignored while in full screen mode.’ In this case it was simply notifying me that updates were due, but, having used Ad-Aware SE Personal in this post, I know cleanup to be efficient and effective.

N.B: this feature can be equally applied to those who regularly watch films or similar on their computers –definitely a useful feature

With the full system scan running in the background running in the background as I write, even on my two year old Acer Aspire 5920 (along with Windows Media Player, Live Messenger, Google Chrome etc) there is very little difference to the overall speed, which is very promising, especially seeing as with other protection suites my system slowed to a crawl! CPU Usage is at an acceptable 52%, and this bodes extremely well for those with the super-powered gaming machines which can really take advantage of this software! Also, at around 20,000 kilobytes of memory being used, this was still lower than both Google Chrome and Windows Live Messenger, at around 45,000 and 40,000 kilobytes respectively.

Again, Demigod worked almost as well as usual, and seeing as this game is relatively high on system resources, I was pleasantly surprised that it was still more than playable – a testament to the fact that Ad-Aware have made a good job in keeping the system resource usage to the minimum. It is also worth pointing out that it is extremely unlikely that anybody would run a scan while gaming at the same time, so in fact the program would have even less effect.

Ad-Watch essentially does what it says on the tin, improving the security by focusing on the registry and networking as its mains areas; blacklisted IP addresses are blocked, along with ‘behaviour based heuristics scanning’ (in plain speech – examining the user’s behaviour and building from that – getting more effective all the time) and as this is being constantly updated it ensures focused protection, again with minimal system resources.

So far so good, but does everything follow?

TrackSweep is a feature not found in the free version of Ad-Aware, and is very useful for minimising any problems found within whichever browser you use, or simply clearing your tracks. The software includes native support for Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera, and while these browsers are popular with most users, I was a little disappointed to find no option to increase this. Being an avid Chrome user obviously I would have appreciated this to be included (and I’m sure the Netscape users and others would feel the same) but then until these programs are more widely used further compatibility is unlikely.

Another issue that has arisen from a week or two of usage is that on the odd occasion that there is some kind of malware to clear up, this process is quite slow. Evidently, when this is restricted to the ‘odd occasion’ it is not much of a problem, but it does make one query as to how long it would take if a computer was more overrun with malware – keyboard junkies and speed aficionados may also be frustrated by the lack of multiple selection when performing this task.

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