Spyware Doctor

Pros: It is an adequate spyware removal program, and there are many great features it offers to help us keep our PCs immune from most spyware, adware, and some other malware.

Cons: The ON GUARD can be a bit processor hungry. Spyware Doctor needs to be updated frequently and doesn't do this automatically. When you update the virus database, it requires a reboot each time, which sometimes makes me feel distracted. Although it provides us many options when we want to scan our PC, such as Run on Startup and Quick Scan/Full Scan, sometimes we only want a memory scan or scan the hard drive only, that may waste our time.

The Bottom Line: I have found that Spyware Doctor could find things that others have missed; it provides many great functions and it is very easy to operate, while it is fairly resource hungry when running.

Benefits:
Today, many of our valuable personal information are stored on our own PC, including credit card and banking details, personal e-mails and the login name/password to some websites. Some intruders could thieve the above information through spyware, or change our homepage and favorites, and pop up excessive numbers of adverts with adware, furthermore they may leave certain malware to slow down our PCs or just make them crash. Some spyware and malware are commendably good at concealing themselves –commonly bundled with software downloads, attached to e-mails, or transmitted through networks. Many antivirus programs and firewalls do not fully protect your system against the majority of spyware and privacy threats, some of which could not be found at all. Once you install these programs, it can be nearly impossible to detect and remove without the help of a dedicated spyware removal tool like Spyware Doctor.
Spyware Doctor is well designed to detect and clean thousands of potential spyware, adware and other malware from your computer. There are many great features it offers to us, with SD’s help, you could detects and remove spyware, adware, malware, Trojans, key loggers and trackware; continuously monitors and protects your PC from browser infections and tracking cookies; allows scheduling of a Quick Scan, Full Scan or Smart Update at specified times and intervals; prevents known malicious processes from running on your computer and so on.
In tests performed by AV-Test.org, PC Tools Spyware Doctor 5.0 did an excellent job finding and removing adware (some ad-tracking cookies are considering as 'infections', we didn't like this habit). Its results with spyware were less impressive but still pretty solid. See the performance cited from a famous website as follows:
PC Tools Spyware Doctor 5.0 detected 81 percent of inactive adware samples and 100 percent of active adware samples, and it successfully removed almost all of those active adware samples. When it came to other intruders, however, PC Tools Spyware Doctor 5.0 spotted only 27 percent of our inactive banking-related spyware and 43 percent of password-stealing spyware. PC Tools Spyware Doctor 5.0 detected all our active spyware samples except the password-stealing Trojan horse PSW.Maran, and successfully cleaned up 70 percent of those infestations. (The operation system tested on is Windows Vista).
Spyware Doctor is a powerful tool to protect our valuable information secret, however, if your PC’s configuration is a little low, it may take up all of the processing power and RAM that your PC would leave you in a state whereby you cannot do anything until it has finished loading and running, so I have found it best to set it off scanning at the end of the day before you shut down the PC. 

Set up:
You could install this program with ease. Once installed, the program walks you through a step-by-step installation guide and this will be finished in a few minutes. The setup file 100 percent clean and it is better to close other running programs before installation in order to avoid system-confliction.
Should you ever want to uninstall this program? It offers us a shortcut to remove itself, but we’re asked to restart our PC otherwise the uninstallation will not be completely finished.

Interface:
The interface is clean and concise; it is considerate and pretty good that there are some semi-transparent elements to cater for Windows Vista. There is a small navigation on the left side, and the right side is the status window. All the 5 buttons are well self-explained, you could easily operate it.

System Requirements:
There is no special requirement except the RAM, if your PC’s RAM is less 256MB, it may affect other programs’ normally running. This program works well on Windows Vista, not only the functions but also the color style.

Conclusion:
The program is intuitively designed, but could use more features to increase its convenience and usefulness, in the next version, I wish this program don’t require a reboot each time it finishes updating, and the RAM-eaten problem could be solved. All in all, it is worth recommending.