Spyware Doctor 3.0 Review

Product: Spyware Doctor 3.0 Price: $29.95 Company Info: PCTools Editor Rating: 3 1/2 stars Download Now!

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Cons
- Some gaps in coverage

Spyware Doctor Product Review

Spyware Doctor 3.0, the latest update to PC Tools anti-spyware product, offers a radically updated user interface, better protection against spyware, and a number of other helpful tools to rid your computer of parasitic spyware programs.

Usability

Spyware Doctor installed without any problems on our test computers.

The user interface has had a major facelift since the previous version we reviewed (2.1). It offers three three types of scans quick scan, full system scan, and custom scan. The program defaults to quick scan mode. Just press the Start scan button and your computer is inspected for spyware pests, browser hijackers, and other parasites.

A full system scan took only 4 minutes on our PC. This was much faster than other products. As usual with us, we are skeptical when an anti-spyware product completes a scan this quickly, as it usually means that many files were skipped. However, the results show that PC Tools has made major strides with this program in the past three months.

Spyware Doctor's new updated UI for version 3.0

Removal

We put Spyware Doctor through the Gooroo Spyware Effectiveness Test. Version 3.0 did not suffer from installation problems that we detected with the previous version.

Spyware Doctor detected 77% of the test spyware we installed, and successfully disabled all of it. This was a major improvement over the previous version as well. Given that we have recently added a number of the latest spyware programs to our test, this is a very good score.

Rollback

Spyware Doctor lets you rollback any changes it makes, in case the spyware you removed was required by an otherwise useful program (Real Player and Kazaa are typical examples of programs that embed spyware on your PC and wont run without it).

Other Options

The previous version of Spyware Doctor was light on options, but PC Tools has made major improvements here as well. In addition to adding a much needed scheduler, the product also includes extensions to monitor and disable browser helper objects and better in-memory spyware monitoring. Many of these features will appeal to "power users" and warrant the slightly higher price of the product.

Spyware Doctor's new Scheduler

Summary

PC Tools has made major improvements to the latest version of their software. In addition to an updated UI and better protection, the product also includes a number of additional tools that power users will find extremely useful.

Purchase Price: $29.95
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