This is how the story goes. One day, a guy's computer starts to act a bit funny. Firstly, he finds himself unable to connect to the internet, and when he does, he keeps running into unfamiliar error messages. He gets frustrated and logs off, thinking that it's his service provider acting up again. He wants to make an angry call, but he is a busy man and he is sure that both his internet problems and his frustration will cool down in a few moments.



He fires up his word-processing software. The deadlines are quite knotty and the work seems a long way from done. He glances at his watch and he does a little mental calculation in his head. He thinks, “I have enough time if I stick at it for the next few hours.” He looks to the screen - the little hourglass icon still hasn't changed, and his spreadsheets still haven't loaded up yet. He ticks an impatient tick against the side of his mouth and starts clicking the mouse for no real reason – it's like pressing the button to make the traffic light go green - a useless endeavour.

Finally, the spreadsheet loads. Numbers and figures jump at him from all angles but he is all familiar with that sinking feeling in his gut. The coffee on his table is still warm and he takes a good swig and starts rapping on his keyboard. Halfway through, his internet connection causes a dialogue box to spring up, interrupting his work. He clicks the ‘Cancel' button but all he is greeted with is an irritating default beep as the dialog box re-appears. He clicks it again, but gets the same result. Again, and again. He swears under his mouth and rubs his head in frustration. Other pop-ups start inundating his screen and suddenly his spreadsheets and his 2 hours of work get buried under a snowstorm of error messages. He screams in frustration and after a few frustrating moments - he loses his sanity briefly and decides to end it, outsmarting the pop-ups by hitting the hard reset button.

But he hasn't saved his work. Something inside of him dies.

This happens again and again. For days he can't figure out what was wrong with this computer and was seriously thinking of buying a new one - even though this one was just a few months old. Never mind - he thinks - he'd take care of the new one. But lucky hat and fate have a weird way of meeting. He met his friend who heard his tale and recommended him something called an anti-spyware programme, a free programme no less. No way – he said.

Way – his friend replied. What had he to lose? He downloaded one, and within minutes started scanning his computer. He wasn't sure whether the programme was legit or even reliable – but he had nothing to lose. After a surprisingly quick scan and deletion of a host of problems he didn't even fathom, he rebooted his computer and waited for the usually 3 minutes of loading time.

A minute later he was whooping inside (because he is a conservative man) and his internet connection was fully functioning. All from a software program less than a few megabytes large, and a fix that took less than a few minutes. So are free spyware programmes reliable? Well, I am that man, and I had that problem not so long ago, and I can tell you the answer. YES!