Microsoft Antispyware Public Beta

Good to see Microsoft Antispyware Beta 1 now out for public download.

First impressions are an easy to use product with a few minor issues:

• Clicking buttons while running a scan is very likely to cause your scan to be aborted without warning.
• It didn't pick up any tracking cookies (Ad-aware picked up a fair number immediately after)
• Some of the buttons are very tiny to click (e.g. Scan Options)
• When registry settings for Internet Explorer need restoring for the first time, the wording in the popups and message boxes that appear at the same time is slightly confusing

And that's it, apart from those, there's nothing I could find to fault it.

Update: Just run Ad-aware and MS Antispyware Beta 1 on a heavily infected machine. Ad-aware found just a couple of registry entries, MS Antispyware Beta 1 found 24 threats which included 123 files and 84 registry entries! It seems the rave reviews of Giant are well deserved.