I have been using Lavasoft's AdAware Pro for 1 year, and it is TIME for renewal. As far as I know, AdAware's the real-time protection (CALLED "AdWatch") has served me WELL, even though I was not sophisticated enough to understand the User's Guide and I therefore was not able to utilize many of AdAware Pro's features; rather, I accepted their default settings and accepted the efficacy on faith.)

I am soliciting thoughts about AdAware Pro: reasons supporting the renewal or reasons supporting trying another brand antimalware.There are many free antiviruses out there that do just as well as paid software.

What exactly are you looking for?At one time Ad-Aware was one of the best but sadly this is no longer true.

If you are looking for real time spyware/malware protection I suggest MalwareBytes' Antimalware. I use the paid version and am extremely pleased with it. http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

You can download it and give it a good looking over without buying it. The free version doesn't offer real-time protection but the scanner has full functions.

Spybot - Search & Destroy.

The only two of the original dynamic duo (Ad-Aware/Spybot) that is still decent.

Keep in mind that it can be a CPU HOG on older machines...There is still a lot that Spybot can't do. It's pretty ineffective at removing Zlob and some Vundo. It is worth using for the Immunize feature though.what i think is an important, and differing, factor is real-time protection. is there a reason why i would choose an antimalware that does not feature real-time?Yes because it is always good to use more than one on-demand scanner to check for malware. Different PRODUCTS will have different definitions in their database.