And now the software is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Or rather, after constant improvements and upgrades, version 8.0 of the software is celebrating. So, how well is it faring after being in existence for ten years?

Reviews have tended to be inconsistent. Many people consider the good reputation of Ad-Aware to be well deserved. They distinguish between the free version, which leaves the user somewhat confused, and the paid version. The second one is more developed and boots and scans faster.

The anniversary version is quite good and is considered to be an improvement. One problem, though, is that the TrackSweep feature is incompatible with the Google Chrome and Apple Safari web browsers. Since it’s the feature that wipes your tracks in your web browser, this is rather annoying. As well, heuristic detection or real-time registry protection facility are not available in the free version of Ad-Aware, so you must buy the Pro version to get the all bells and whistles.

Some professional reviewers hold this opinion, but do amateur users like you agree? These reviews can vary greatly. On one hand, many people swear that Ad-Aware was the only program that could completely erase all of their malware. On the other, there are those who ran Ad-Aware several times and then had SpyBot or some other anti-spyware software find all sorts of malware that Ad-Aware missed. However, you can read reviews saying precisely the same thing about just about every anti-spyware program in existence, so this is clearly a reflection of the fact that no single program ever finds and wipes out everything.

However, most of the negative reviews pertain to the free version, which is considerably different from the Pro version. For a lot of people, the free version just doesn’t provide enough protection to warrant using it. Some people complain that it failed to remove malware that it supposedly should have eliminated, and that the developer provided no tech support. Nor was a refund, after everything had been tried and had failed. In one or two cases, the most recent version of the software actually froze the person’s computer, and the user finally had to downgrade back to the previous version to use it at all.

However, on every site where users can give 1 to 5 stars when they do their reviews, the average after hundreds of responses comes in to the 3.5 to 4 range. The implication is that this program is still a good choice, and although it’s not the top rated program, it’s still worth checking out.

Along with a good anti-virus program, spyware removal software should be a priority to ensure the security of your computer and your personal information. The good news is you don’t even have to pay for it if you use freeware spyware remover software, which you can download from numerous websites that offer freeware spyware removal tools.