Spyware Doctor has been ranked as number one before in PC Magazines review. In the past couple of years Spysweeper and Spyware Doctor swapped first and second place. Spyware Doctor has been steadily number one for the past couple of years now.
Anti-virus software like Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, will only allow one version of anti-virus software at a time on your computer. Spyware programs allow multiple versions of the software. For example on my laptop right now I have Spybot Search & Destroy (free), Lavasoft Adaware (free - for getting rid of pop-up ads), Uniblue Spy Eraser and Spyware Doctor.
If I did not run any of these programs for a couple of weeks and then ran all of them, they would all find some “spyware” program on your computer. They all look for different variations and types of spyware. Some of these are no threat at all for the computer, others can be very harmful.
While doing testing I installed Spysweeper and Spyware Doctor on the same laptop. They both ran real slow to the point that it was taking a couple of hours just to do a scan. I uninstalled Spysweeper and Spyware Doctor finished the scan in under 35 minutes.
On some websites there are banners that appear saying “free computer scan”. I would be very wary of these banners. Many of them install spyware on your computer. Others run the scan in seconds and say for $29.95 we will get rid of them for you and you will be spyware free for a year.
I just fixed a computer that was given the latter sales pitch. When I ran Spyware doctor over 650 spyware files were on the customers computer. The initial call to me was that the computer was running slow. Removing the spyware resulted in at least a 50% increase in speed. Eliminating Internet temporary files, running disk cleanup and defragging the hard drive got the computer to almost like new.
I highly recommend Spyware Doctor. I usually run Spyware Doctor last, but it still picks up files that the other three do not pick up. The second choice would be Spyware Eraser, followed by Spysweeper. I just found Spysweeper very slow and when I visit a small business they want their computers fixed right away. A Spysweeper scan is almost always over an hour, longer if the computer has never has a spyware removal program run on it before.
Please visit my blog site below and leave comments or suggestions there. Please let others know about this article. My goal is to inform the computer user so that we can all prevent these viruses from spreading.
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John Gontowicz is the author of three computer ebooks including How to Learn Excel, How to Make Your Computer Run Stronger, Longer and Faster, and Computers 101. Please visit the site above for more information.
Comments and suggestions can be made on my blog site http://yourpcguide.blogspot.com
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