Is their any???

just a simple question. what R the downsides to counter spy

 

I'm not sure if downsides is the right word 'cos the average user is likely to find CC a light and effective compliment to their AV and FW.

However when you look at its realtime protection you realise that you could do better with more specialised programs (if you know how to use them). Thus execution protection, which is very effective protection in CC, will not extend to protect you from legitimate progs being exploited since they will be allowed to run - thus CC will prevent an unknown .exe from running (unless you allow it) but will not stop Rundll32.exe from running an unknown .dll or ntvdm.exe from running an unknown .com file (as far as I can see anyway!).

Incidently, known bad progs are prevented from running (either automatically or with a prompt), so you only make decisions for unknown progs; this makes CC's execution protection more useful for average users when compared with SSM etc.

Similarly, Registry protection in CC will not cover as many positions as you could manage with a specialist program (if you know what you are doing!).

The above 'downsides' would apply to other AS progs as well, indeed more so since they are unlikely to have similar execution protection at all. The fact CC is a Kernal level prog does, however, mean that it may cause slowdowns if you run it together with other security apps, but this is all system dependent and you would need to trial it.

If you are using CC on an infected system, intending to clean it, then it should do a good job, but that does not guarantee it'll do as well as, say, SAS in all cases; but then its sigs, together with execution protection, should prevent the infection from happening in the first place. This is rather different from traditional AS progs where realtime protection was more about damage limitation than complete protection.

 

CS's downsides is it's heavier on systemimpact then SD or SAS causing browser slowdowns at least with opera plus it's not that well cleaning up spyware wich SAS does better.

On the other side it's good as an anti malware/trojan scanner.

 

montyq,
The downside of CounterSpy is that it is a scanner, based on a blacklist and tells you that your computer is "malware-free", while this isn't necessarily true. However if you believe CounterSpy than everything is OK, at least in your mind.
Keep also in mind that when CounterSpy finds a malware, it might have done its evil job already before removal.