Comments on: Get Spyware Doctor for free - a first look at the Starter Edition

The Starter Edition of Spyware Doctor is available for free as part of Google Pack. This is my first look at it.

[Doug Woodall]

Hey, great review. PC Tools Spyware Doctor is a great product. It does have some drawbacks for the geek user. But for the casual online user, it works great.
There are few of my visitors that send me a negative report after using Spyware Doctor.

[PCToolsSoftware]

Hello Michael, thanks for taking the time to review Spyware Doctor Starter Edition from the Google Pack. We always appreciate reviews of our products so that more people can experience them.

I would like to highlight some inaccuracies in your review so you can correct them for the benefit of your readers.

Quote >> "I take this as a bad sign. If anti-malware software can't do something as easy as reporting the last update date (so that I can insure it's current), then maybe it won't report other important information in a clear, simple way."

It seems you have missed looking at the left-hand side of our system information section (which for some reason has been cropped out in your review). This clearly displays when the last update was run -> ?Last update was today? or ??.yesterday?, or ??.less than an hour ago.?
Refer to the full screenshot here:
http://www.pctools.com/res/images/spyware-doctor/screenshot-en.gif


Quote >> "The just-installed software was old in two respects. According to PC Tools, the latest version is 5.1.0.273, Google installed version 5.1.0.272."

Spyware Doctor comes in two versions, the Starter Edition (this is the Google pack build, version x.272), and the full edition, version x.273. The versions have different feature sets and are different physical builds; this is why they do not always have exactly the same build numbers. The main version v5.1 is the same for both, and Google Pack is the latest version for that product.

Quote >> "Spyware Doctor seemed to be conducting a denial of service attack on me. It (program swdsvc.exe, the PC Tools security service) was consuming all the processor cycles on the machine."

Although it may not be obvious to the user, on first installation Spyware Doctor does much more than just an update; in the background it is running a thorough system check to ensure a clean environment. It scans many critical sections for pre-existing malware infections and alerts you if it finds anything. A thorough system scan does take some processing power, however it?s most vital role when it first lands on your PC is to quickly detect and remove any current infections that may exist.

Quote >> "If software thinks it knows best, fine. But it should ask the user before doing something resource intensive?"

Being an advanced PC user yourself, it would be obvious for the need to run a system scan and an update on install to ensure your system is clean. However our customer base is largely made-up of non-expert computer users; who want an easy to use, set and forget product. Our product is designed with this non-expert user in mind, who may not be aware of the importance of running a scan immediately on install. So, Spyware Doctor takes the necessary steps to ensure the machine is protected without expecting the user to be an anti-malware expert. If you consider the time it takes to install other popular PC software or other security products, we think it?s not too much inconvenience to let Spyware Doctor check your system is clean from malware.

Quote >> "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. But that shouldn't be the default behavior."

Not to speak for Google; but this is exactly the behavior that Spyware Doctor Starter Edition has been designed to do for the Google pack. Also remember our target audience, the basic computer user, who does not want to be an anti-malware expert, nor should they have to be. That is why our software is designed for what most (99%+) people need. Our customers trust us as the industry experts and that is why we make the educated decisions for them, silently and in the background. Our users are not bothered by alerts asking them to make decisions they would not know the answer to.

For advanced users, they can use the settings area to turn alerts on or off.


Quote >> "All the scans I ran on drive letters that represented mapped network drives were refused. There was no error or warning, the scans just always examined zero files."
The custom scan feature in Spyware Doctor is designed for checking local drives, that is the c-drive and other external drives such as a USB stick or backup device, not network drives. This is essentially because spyware is fundamentally different viruses, where removing spyware is much more that just deleting a file. It involves finding all the parts of the threat that may be in the registry, running process and other areas, hence scanning network drives is not recommended unless you are using Spyware Doctor Enterprise.

Quote >> "The other missing item is the Tools button. It is shown in the getting started documentation and also visible in the CNET video at download.com. What the tools are though neither says."

We have one currently released tool, called "Malware Detective." This tool is only used by our support team to retrieve optional extra information from the machine to more effectively repair challenging malware. This is an optional install that can be installed if needed by our support team and is not a specific restriction in the Starter Edition.

Quote >> "When it comes time to upgrade to version 5.2 or version 6 is Google or Spyware Doctor or both or neither going to perform the update? So far, the answer has been neither."

Since neither version 5.2 nor 6.0 of Spyware Doctor has been released it's probably a good thing that neither have tried to update you to a non-existent version! When a new version does get released, which it has many times since Spyware Doctor was first released in the Google Pack, the update is performed seamlessly, with both Google Pack and Spyware Doctor able to perform the update, whichever one runs first will handle the update.

Quote >> "It wasn't hard to find critical reviews of Spyware Doctor version 5."

If you were looking for critical reviews I have no doubt you could find them. On the Internet you can find critical reviews of just about any product or service. The point of a fair software review is to be unbiased, search for all the information available and write an objective article. It is interesting that this review does not mention any of the good reviews and awards we have had. Did you know that Spyware Doctor is the most internationally awarded anti-spyware product available?

Some of our good reviews can be read here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136206/article.html
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1992016,00.asp
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?ReviewID=1206

We also have independent certification from VB100 and Westcoast Labs and Editor?s Choice awards from Computerbild ? Germany?s largest consumer IT magazine, PC Utilities, Windows XP and PC Answers magazines in the UK.

Quote >> "At CNET, Robert Vamosi reviewed it shortly after it was released in March and gave it 6 stars out of 10."

Previous to this review, Spyware Doctor was rated 5/5 stars, because it was reviewed using a full unrestricted version. After changing our trial version to be restricted, Robert Vamosi reviewed it as trialware only. Download.com doesn't review full versions of software anymore, only trialware, which is obviously unfair for commercial applications.

Further, the review conducted by Robert Vamosi had fundamental flaws, both factually and in its review methodology. There were basic problems with how the review was conducted, not just in the case of Spyware Doctor, but for other security products also reviewed that had some obvious errors in their reviews too. I would respectfully suggest you look at some of the expert reviews, like PC World, were they used independent testing labs with malware experts based in Germany to test against 30,000 real-world spyware threats, not 8 threats of which some were not even malware - as was the case with the CNET review.

Quote >> "The free trial version has been downloaded a whopping 17.4 million times at CNET's download.com."

Spyware Doctor has in fact been downloaded many more times than this from Download.com, however unfortunately the Download.com counter has been broken for some time now. Also you may not be aware of this, but none of the sponsored listings on download.com are counted either, and many products in the top 50 on download.com redirect downloads from their website to download.com in order to artificially inflate the counter. If PC Tools sent all the Spyware Doctor downloads to download.com it would most likely become the most downloaded product on download.com.
In fact Spyware Doctor has been downloaded over 150 Million times since the first release in 2004.


On a final note, we get a lot of valuable feedback from editorial and user reviews, which we use to shape our product and implement wherever possible. We would never say our products are 100% perfect, because no software is, but we work very hard to make Spyware Doctor the absolute best anti-spyware product available. Although you may consider me biased, even though there is always room for improvement, I believe that we have the best anti-spyware product available today.

Regards,
Magida Ezzat - Marketing Communications Manager
PC Tools Spokesperson

[ruminator]

Excellent critique of this blog! But be forewarned--this blogger calls anyone who disagrees with him a stalker [just plain weird]... It'd be interesting to see how this blogger responds.

[sanwinhlaing]