A while back I wrote looking for someone to point out a real-time, free anti-spyware product. I mentioned that I was testing Spyware Terminator and Threatfire. Well, after a few months of testing the products and using them on at least a hundred computers if not more I have some new experiences to share. Threatfire - No longer welcome on my computers. I have begun uninstalling it whenever I have the opportunity. 1) Threatfire is a heavy duty CPU hog. Whenever anything else is doing something threatfire takes up to 25% of the CPU or more to monitor it (very noticeable on slower machines). 2) Threatfire routinely causes memory violation errors with svchost.exe during shutdown. It does it intermittently, but does it consistently on a wide range of computers, even brand new fresh installs. The problem results in a warning message at shutdown that svchost was shutdown, and sometimes the threatfire executable is shutdown in similar fashion. 3) There is no 64-bit support to my knowledge. Many new machines are 64 bit, and there is really no excuse for not creating a 64-bit version at this day and age. 4) I have had to clean up after the product a few times now because it apparently has blocked very benign processes and completely hosed certain products by quarantining important files. This can be expected I guess, but it obviously isn't producing enough information for the end user to make an informed decision, or it is automatically performing the actions without user intervention. I have not found it to block any real threats. The single greatest cause of me deciding to completely stop using Threatfire is the svchost errors during shutdown. Nothing is more frustrating than having a brand new fresh install and you show it to a client and after everything is working fine, you shut it down in front of them and, DONG - svchost.exe shutdown - memory access violation. How many months does it take to fix such a significant bug? Obviously more than I've been using the product. Anyways, its not for me. Spyware Terminator - Has now proven to be a very useful product, a clean interface, and reliable protection. It has earned a place in my toolbag. Pros: 1) Completely free, real-time, automatic updates, anti-spyware protection. 2) Fast, and lightweight. Adds 5-30 seconds to startup time during boot depending on power of system, but worth it. 3) When it blocks something it will clearly pop up a window and tell you what the filename was, where it is located, what process started it, who the manufacturer is and even give you a description of the file if it can. It gives plenty of information to make an informed decision what to do. 4) Configured properly you almost never know it is even running. Very quiet, and has a mode that requires next to no user interaction. 5) Has reliably protected many computers now evidenced by the fact that I have had 0 computers come back with a scareware infection in the last several months using this product along side of Avast. Before that, Avast was letting these product on and computers were coming back to me for repair. Cons: 1) Default settings of the product are not very good. Careful configuration makes it a much nicer product. 2) Important system settings are stored in the user registry hive. If you create a new user account or have additional user accounts, the same settings have to be set in the other accounts. These settings include how it updates, when it scans, etc. pretty much everything that should be system wide. 3) Comes with the crawler toolbar, and worthless clam anti-virus if you aren't careful. 4) Default settings cause the product to nag to you that you are not protected if you don't install the crawler toolbar and clam anti-virus. I use Avast and McAfee SiteAdvisor. This product has proven that it recognizes both of those product's protection, but conveniently ignores one or the other and complains you need to install crawler or clam for protection. 5) It tries to update, by default, using some sort of peer-to-peer network. Its virtually worthless. But, it does update smoothly using the actual spyware terminator servers, which is an option in the program. 6) There are some other nags that come up until you tell it to not tell you any more. 7) No 64-bit real-time support. It works on 64-bit but will not give real-time protection. Overall, the product has a clean interface that is easy to use and has proven to be effective in protecting computers. It has done well on my own personal machines and has consistently only blocked things that I really would consider blocking. It has an extensive whitelist to auto allow many recognized products which keeps it silent. Its biggest draw back is that I actually had to create a .reg file to load on each computer after installing it so that I didn't have to configure the 6-8 settings and disable the "timed" nags it generates. This isn't much of a problem for an individual user, but I don't care for the fact that it could lead people into installing clam or crawler on top of your own anti-virus or SiteAdvisor if they don't know any better and I install it on A LOT of machines. The nags can only be tweaked from the registry, or you have to wait for it to actually pop up and then disable it. It hasmany options that are annoying, so it takes some usage of the product to optimize the settings. I do not use scheduled scans, and do not use scheduled scans on any product for performance reasons. Real-time is all I want. I do find these drawbacks easy enough to work around and although I don't like them, I know that there is some motivational factor behind it being a free product. Up to this time this is still the only free real-time, automated update anti-spyware product I know of. So, after extensive testing in the real world with people who are good at getting themselves infected I have had 0 (yes, that is zero) returns due to infection using Avast, SpywareTerminator and McAfee SiteAdvisor with NO other protection besides the windows firewall. That is only a test over a period of a few months, but I can safely say that these results are better than my previous experience with Avast alone. I guess one last review I would add is that of McAfee SiteAdvisor and the "Web Of Trust," toolbar. McAfee SiteAdvisor is a Class A product. Hands down it is extremely effective and accurate. Avoid the yahoo toolbar, yahoo homepage, and search settings during install and nothing else is required for this to be an extremely effective tool. The tests that McAfee runs on each site is highly accurate and reliable and contains almost every website you can find. I have ran the Web Of Trust toolbar on one of my home computers and the SiteAdvisor toolbar on my work computers. I can say that the Web Of Trust toolbar is virtually useless. Its so inaccurate that it cannot even be considered a serious tool for protecting you. Its information comes from no REAL tests on websites and instead relies on the feedback of other users. So pretty much you see every site that people just choose to not like marked in rellow and red. All kinds of good sites are flagged yellow or red. These same sites have had heavy duty testing performed by McAfee SiteAdvisor and pass with flying colors. Professional sites, that require memberships, are flagged bad. Obviously this is a toolbar of opinions and not reality. Side by side, SiteAdvisor and Web Of Trust have completely different ratings. I consistently have to ignore Web Of Trust ratings so that I can view frequently visited websites that I know to be good, I have never had to do that with SiteAdvisor. On the contrary, I finally found a site marked by SiteAdvisor as having "browser exploits," so I decided I would visit it. Sure enough, the computer was immediately infected without my consent of downloading or installing anything. Avast ignored half of it. I know Google has had its problems and is not infallible, but something is wrong when at least one or two sponsored links on every google search are flagged at least yellow or red by Web Of Trust when they are completely legitimate, harmless websites. Anyways, thats my experience, I'd be interested in anybody else's experience with these products.