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By Mohammad Yousef | January 2005
[Back to Part 1]
Program Features
As I’ve already mentioned, Real-time Protection can significantly increase your protection against spyware threats. This duty is carried out by 3 different “agents”: Internet, system and application agents. Each agent can be managed easily.
Microsoft AntiSpyware comes with three Advanced Tools as well. Firstly, the System Explorers tool provides the user with hidden information such as start-up programs, browser helper objects and hidden applications installed on the system. The second tool is called Browser Hijack Restore which can aid in the recovery from a hijacked browser. And the third item is the Tracks Eraser – an awesome privacy tool (system cleaner) and one of my favourite features in the program.
Summary
Microsoft AntiSpyware is a powerful and highly configurable tool package but it’s still not perfect and the proof is the bug I encountered in my first scan. My advice is that if you’re a regular computer user, wait for the final release to come out, but advanced users can start playing with this cool toy if interested.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that this version of Microsoft AntiSpyware will expire on July, 31. This probably implies that Microsoft has not decided to give AntiSpyware away for free. If this happens, I still cannot tell whether it would be worth buying it. While it is an excellent program, reliable anti-spyware tools like Spybot-S&D and Ad-Aware SE can be downloaded off the internet at no cost.
More information about Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta
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