Ad-Aware sits up there with products like ZoneAlarm and AVG as one of the first and most effective free ways to bulk up protection on a home PC. It is celebrating ten years in the business with the Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition, the Pro (non-free) version of which we have on test here.

After an initial install and registration, an automatic update is performed to grab the latest definitions, which is a necessary step before running a scan. The first thing we noticed is that the main interface has undergone a bit of a tidy up and most importantly now integrates the Ad-Watch live-guard into the one package. This is a rather belated move on Lavasoft's part, but we're pleased to see that it has finally combined the range of tools on offer very neatly.

The main page shows update, system scan and Ad-watch status and allows you to set up a scan schedule to run at regular intervals. Smart, full and 'profile' scans are available, with the latter basically a custom option to choose specific threat types, and while scan times weren't exactly lightning fast we were generally quite pleased with how they compared to rivals.

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Lavasoft claims that the anniversary edition uses 74 percent less memory than the previous version and 60 percent fewer resources, with only 18 percent CPU usage on average during scans. Perhaps we're becoming rather cynical, but we were actually quite surprised to see that this is indeed accurate, and the fact that there was little or no impact on system performance while scanning gives extra credence to the average scan times.

Results are returned in a list box that groups similar threats (e.g. cookies) together under a single object heading, which can be expanded if necessary to view each suspect file. There's a choice of solutions here including the software's default recommended action or manual selection that includes removing, quarantining or adding all files to a watch list, allowing access once or repairing the file. Ad-Aware also adds itself to Windows' right-click menu so you can pinpoint-scan specific files, and integrates itself with the Windows Security Center.

Overall we were pleased with the comprehensive degree to which Ad-Aware was able to detect and remove threats, which include viruses, spyware, trojans, bots and rootkits. In addition to dealing with existing threats, the Ad-Watch component should stop any new ones from infecting your computer, since it includes real-time registry, network and process protection. This also seemed to work well and even if a process or file doesn't match an existing definition, the software will detect any suspicious activity and err on the side of caution by asking for access confirmation.

In addition to protection and scanning there are some extras on offer here such as TrackSweep, which can erase all traces of activity from Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, with a selectable list of exactly what you want removed. There's also a process viewer and Autostart manager which, while basically duplicates of the Windows Task Manager and MSConfig utility, do offer a slightly more usable interface.

Overall we were pleased by the comprehensive degree of protection, new slimline interface and range of tools on offer from Ad-Aware, and this latest version certainly offers a number of worthwhile improvements. It's now less resource hungry and imposes few overheads on performance, and people looking specifically for a no-nonsense malware-cleaning package should find Ad-Aware anniversary edition to be extremely capable.