For almost as long as there has been a "Spybot Search & Destroy" I've been using it and sharing it with my home computer customers.
I've made donations as I could afford it and I've urged my customers to do likewise. Having said that......
Spybot S&D is a great program for removing Adware/Spyware, but it has never claimed to be an Anti-Virus/Anti-Trojan program although I have witnessed it removing some Trojans.
For that reason, I have used and shared AVG FREE for myself and all my hundreds of customers. We all remain virus and spyware FREE.
I've spent a considerable amount of time and money, typing up and printing instructions for the use of Spybot S&D for all my customers. It's a GREAT program if set up and run properly. To every user, I stress the 1-2-3 approach..... update, immunize and scan, every week.
I find the user interface for ver. 2 to be way too "Techie" for my retired customers to deal with, whereas version 1.6.x was very simple and user friendly. I really had to search for a simple way to just get the most recent updates to ver. 2.
I also found that at the end of a scan, all my cookies and history were pre-checked for deletion. I don't want that!
Let me check what I want deleted, like in the older version.
Only pre-check Spyware and other known Malware.
I also heard a question about registry cleaners. On some forums, even the mention of that, is a NO! NO!
I have tried the much touted "CCleaner" twice over a period of several years and both times it has left my computer UN-Bootable.
I had to turn to a full C: drive restore (I use Ghost) to get my computer back up and running again.
Having said that, I do use a registry and junk cleaner, called "Easy Cleaner 2".
I've used it on my own PC's and the PC's of most of my customers with never any negative effects. However it's almost redundant to clean the junk out of your registry unless you re-compress it afterwards. Only after a re-compression, will it actually take up less space in RAM when it loads and improve system efficiency.
After removing Office 2007 from my HD, I ran Easy Cleaner 2 and then NTREGOPT to re-compress the registry and it reduced the overall size of the registry by 30+ megabytes. So I'm definitely a PRO-ponent of registry cleaning, if it's done intelligently.
That's about it!
Thank you, Safer-Networking for a great effort to improve an already great product.
The Doctor