Windows Defender

Download: Microsoft

Microsoft Window’s Defender is Microsoft’s very own anit-spyware tool which is available for free to users of Windows XP service pack 2.

Windows Defender is actually backed by the wordwide SpyNet community, meaning that each new spyware thread doesn’t have to go through Microsoft’s programmers before it is classed as spyware. This results in a much more reliable spyware protection system, where new spyware remains undetectable by Defender for very short periods of time.

Real Time Monitoring

Real time monitoring is a common feature in the current generation of anti-spyware programs. Microsoft haven’t neglected this important feature, having some of the best real time monitoring available out of all the anti-spyware programs we tested.

Test Results

Windows Defender was able to pick up threats that other anti-spyware programs were unable to detect. On the same note, Windows Defender missed some of the spyware threats that the other tools we tested were able to pick up. All in all Windows Defender performed well, but not the best overall.

Resource Usage

Windows Defender is not known for being the most resource friendly tool available. The real time monitoring it offers comes at the cost of rather high memory usage. If you’re using an older PC you’re going to really feel this excessive usage in the form of a performance knock.

More than likely as a result of this high resource usage, Windows Defender can cause system crashes.

Common Problems

One of the most common complains that we’ve heard about Windows Defender is that it does not update it’s definitions regularly. We did not experience this problem during testing, but we did find a considerable number of complaints on various site about it.