Well, as far as the free ones go, that would be my advice.

I haven't tried any of the ones that cost money, either a one time charge or periodic fee.

I'm going to try this apparent new version of Spybot just to see if the have updated it.

I would recommend running Spybot at least once, as it does initially clean some things up that AA sometimes doesn't get. But it is simply a one time deal, at least in my experience.

For example, it closes a security loophole in Windows Media Player. This was, however, a couple of years ago. The vulnerability may not still be there anyway, so it may be moot.

I guess the point of all this rambling is that you should probably try Spybot, but it doesn't do anything for me.

AA, on the other hand, is an outstanding free spyware eliminator.