for the last 5 years I have been an avid supporter of technology, especially computers and the Internet (goods and services).
I am also a firm supporter of individuals/companies getting paid for the sercices/goods they offer/produce, nothing is for free anymore,
except if an individual/company offers a service/product for free for whatever reason.
One of the main reasons, a service/product is offered for free, is for advertising/promoting the same and or other services/products.
You use a free product/service and by seeing how good it is, you might decide 400:1 to buy the service/product.
So, if I was the individual/company offering the free product/service I would support or at least try my best to support it.
Here is, where Lavasoft keeps surprising me the last 2-3 years, although you have a very large users base for Ad-adaware SE free version (close to 300 million downloads ??),
at the same time you do nothing or almost nothing to support it.
You close and re-open your forums, develop the "authenticity check" tool and keep it in beta for almost 2 years now, generally speaking you cann't make up your minds.
Gentlemen if you want to be up there in the Major league with the big boys ( Symantec,CA, Grisoft etc) you have to decide what is to happen with the Ad-aware free version, will you keep supporting it or not?
It took you more than 15 days!!! to fix the beta version problem of your "authenticity check" ( September 19 till October 6 ), other times there might be quite a few weeks interval between publishing new definitions and
at the same time you never or almost never respond to users requests not even with a short notice: " There is a small problem with ... we are fixing it, be with you shortly",
this is a little un-professional don't you think, even if it concerns users of a free version.
I hope you take this criticism in a positive way.
Thank you