You may prefer your anti-malware software to run quietly in the background and not ask you or tell you anything about what it's doing. Spyware Doctor didn't indicate that it was doing anything, so I shut it down to prevent the machine from overheating. But it should ask the user before doing something resource intensive, or, at least, say what's going on and let the user cancel it. Mind you, I hadn't asked it to do anything other than update itself. It (program swdsvc.exe, the PC Tools security service) was consuming all the processor cycles on the machine. Spyware Doctor seemed to be conducting a denial of service attack on me. Old software though, was the least of my problems. Google Pack, in particular, was first released two years ago. You may forgive things like this since Google Pack is in beta, but Google has re-defined the term beta, their software retains that label for years on end. But, even after bringing it up to date and re-booting, the version number remained 5.1.0.272. The Spyware Doctor self-update facility (called "smart update") found a bunch of missing updates and easily installed them. According to PC Tools, the latest version is 5.1.0.273, Google installed version 5.1.0.272. The just-installed software was old in two respects. However, even though it said Spyware Doctor was up-to-date, that was not the case.
The Google download and install process is straightforward. Google Pack works with Windows XP and Vista. You can download just Spyware Doctor by itself, which I did. The Google Pack download page, shown above, let's you pick and chose applications. Google lets you pick and chose Google Pack applications The Starter Edition even offers tech support by email, the paid version adds phone support. Interestingly, this is almost the mirror image of the free trial which offers all the protection, but none of the removal. What it's lacking, is most of the protection features that prevent infection in the first place. In short, the Starter Edition will find and remove spyware and adware on a par with the paid version. You can see the difference between the free Starter Edition and the full version.
The bottom of the product's home page says: "The Starter Edition offers full scan and removal of threats, and basic real-time protection, is available for free as part of the Google Pack."įull spyware removal for free? This I had to check out. The free trial version has been downloaded a whopping 17.4 million times at CNET's .Īccording to the vendor, PC Tools, "The trial offers time unlimited real-time protection (free spyware blocking), but does not remove threats detected during on-demand scans."īut, there is another free version, a "Starter Edition".