M icrosoft’s product isn’t officially released yet, but the latest beta version can be
downloaded for free.

All the features you’d expect are there, including scheduled updates and scans, and there’s fairly useful information about what to do when spyware is detected. On-screen pop-up ads in the style of tools such as Zonealarm alert you, and the program appeared to detect a reasonable range of the software that was infecting our test machine.

It was also the only one that correctly restored our home page to the original, rather than the default. That said, it also claimed to have removed some toolbars that were still conspicuously present when we restarted the PC, and a second run was needed to remove some spyware that the first claimed to have fixed.

There’s also a good range of tools to detect spyware before it infects your computer, which should help keep things clean in future. For that reason alone, the beta is well worth a look and, if the final version remains free, it should definitely be worth installing, alongside one of the other tools, to give you early warning when
something unpleasant tries to install itself on your PC.