Update: continued in beta 2 thread!

As announced on the website, we've starting beta testing the next release, 1.6: spybotsd160-beta1.exe (please see beta 2 instead)
  1. The first aspect of testing mostly includes the scanning speed. How much did it improve for you, compared to 1.5.2?
  2. We also want to know whether all our bug fixes are satisfying; if you want to help towards getting a faster public release, here's a list of all changes since 1.5.2: change history
    You replying to those with "Fix confirmed" or any problems you've encountered would help us a lot.


Presumed Questions & Answers

Q: When will you release a final version of 1.6?
A: U.S. Independence Day (4th of July) would be nice. Provided that there's enough feedback and no bigger problems appearing.

Q: How did you make it faster?
A: As you may have read on the news page, we've integrated parts of the new file scanner engine designed for Spybot-S&D 2.0, which was rewritten to take many aspects of modern malware fighting into account - those include the fast growing size of the database, the variety of malware and a few other aspects.

Q: Will it still be able to do the same things, or did you give up features to make it faster?
A: Actually, some of the new algorithms allow the engine to be even more flexible, so we could add features that we kept back so far to save scanning time.

Q: Is there room for even more improvements?
A: The current improvements do not affect the special deep scanning of the Download Directories feature yet, where we'll also be able to make some improvements, but haven't decided on the most performant method yet.

Q: Are there any other new things in 1.6 I should note?
A: There will be one other huge feature that'll be addressing another larger type of complaint we've received. Stay tuned to the beta forum, and you'll see.