Microsoft Windows Anti-Spyware (beta) Software Review

It's been common knowledge for a while now that Microsoft intends to provide both Anti-virus and Anti-spyware software programs either as part of its operating systems or as a separate commercial component. Back in 2003, the company purchased GeCAD to acquire the rights to its anti-virus software, and more recently in 2004, Microsoft bought Giant software company, a manufacturer of anti-spyware software among other applications.

On January 6, 2005 Microsoft made the beta version of its new Anti-spyware software publicly available for download. In keeping with the rest of the offerings in this new growth market, Microsoft's product is targeted at novice users primarily, offering a simple interface and many explanations to help users decide what they want to eliminate from their systems, and what they don't.

This Windows 2000/2003/XP only product, currently named Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (beta) (update 2018 - this software is no longer available from MSFT) is up for its public test run. The version available for download now is free and fully functional. According to the license agreement, this beta software will cease to function in June of 2005 (or whenever Microsoft decides to stop it) so expect a full version around that time. Bill gates recently announced that Microsoft's anti-spyware software would remain free to all 'licensed users', so there may well not be any major changes to the beta besides the upcoming enforcement of the Windows XP verification program.

Unless Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (beta) proves to be complete trash (which we very much doubt), Microsoft's future anti-spyware product should be a guaranteed success; replacing the various dodgy commercial anti-spyware products out there with a trusted brand seems like a sure recipe for printing money, so Microsoft should be congratulated for going the philanthropist route, at least on this issue.

Spyware scanning and removal

Microsoft's Antispyware beta is at its heart an update based 'definition' scanner like most of its competitors, including the free Ad-Aware and Spybot scanners. By this we mean it uses a frequently updated list of adware and spyware files and registry entries and compares the contents of your hard drive and memory to this list of 'definitions' to identify threats. The software does have several additional features though, which help to make it more viable as a future commercial product.

The spyware scanning application itself contains the options you would expect, including a scheduling feature and full and quick scanning options.