On LS’ blog, the latest entry is bragging about the positive press AAW 2007 got. Well, not press in the traditional sense, because real journalists would have investigated thoroughly. Let’s nitpick a bit.
One of the first applications built to find and remove adware and spyware, Ad-Aware 2007’s excellent reputation is well-justified.
The first such utility was not written by Lavasoft, but by Steve Gibson under the name Optout, although LS officially claims: “We are not just any anti-spyware company, we are the original anti-spyware company”. While Steve Gibson is by far not an undisputed expert, the kudos is his, not LS’. Furthermore the whole statement was bullshit given that AAW 2007 was released in 2007, while other AS-companies (even LS themselves) have released products prior to that. So how could it be one of the first? Bad wording or negligence? As to the reputation, I ask my readers to visit the LS support forum to check by themselves (unless it’s being cleaned up). They even got a special rant thread – woohoo.
Ad-Aware 2007 Free is a solid post-infection tool… I recommend this free version as a utility that savvy users shouldn’t be without.
Woohoo. Now how could anyone object this? Hmm, how about independent testers? While the methods of AV-testers are certainly not perfect, there are testers for this group of products. In the AS-industry there is no such independent1 review mechanism. So I wonder how this person can make such an assertion. Solid? Hmm, sounds like stable. I wonder what all the LS support forum users would say to this?! We could ask “MAD AS HELL”?! 
Advanced protection from malicious files and operations…it provides the most thorough tracking of any program out there, and with quick and simple downloadable updates, you can ensure that you always stay one step ahead of the evils of the Net.
Now that’s the best one. I wonder whether the review was bought or whether the reviewer didn’t go beyond reading the marketing material. Some people have tested it and the results were devastating, so the only scenario I can imagine if this reviewer even installed AAW 2007 is, that he was testing the superior cookie detection and removal functions, which, according to other sources, are not as good as they used to be in AAW SE.
// Oliver
PS: Screenshot of the blog entry kept in storage, because LS blog entries are known to be volatile …
- … and widely respected [↩]