Venerable anti-spyware tool Ad-Aware has launched today its latest edition: Ad-Aware 2008. As before, there are three versions of the software available: Free (which offers competent on-demand scanning), Plus ($27/year; adds real-time scanning and a host of extra features), and Pro ($40/year; adds network-protection features and some power-user options). I've been using the 2008 Pro version for a few days, and am happy to report things are going swimmingly (after powering through a few pre-launch hiccups, at least).

Ad-Aware 2008 looks a lot like the 2007 version of the program, but with a freshened-up interface and somewhat more intuitive controls in a few places. Most of the changes, however, are found under the hood, and they are significant.

First, for all versions, including Free, a 64-bit option is available if you're one of the few people running a 64-bit OS. Naturally there have been great strides in security, particularly with the detection and removal of rootkits. If you're using Plus or Pro, Ad-Aware now includes an antivirus tool in addition to its spyware killer. The company says over a million additional malware threats can be detected by the software in real-time, and all with a reduction in memory usage while it's running.

I can't vouch for how much more secure my system is running Ad-Aware 2008, but so far, so good: No infections. In running the real-time system, my computer seems plenty responsive. Things only bogged down when I ran a full scan of my hard drive. That scan took an hour and caused some slowness in other apps I was running, though none of them crashed. The software is also slow to launch when you first start it up, but after that all's well.

I can't immediately recommend replacing your existing antivirus security with Ad-Aware Plus or Pro (hopefully independent virus testing will let us know soon whether it's up to snuff), but if you've been using any Ad-Aware version to date, there's no reason not to upgrade to the 2008 edition immediately. 

Get any of the three versions here