Lavasoft, company that late last year put out the Avira-based Anti-Virus Helix, is currently celebrating the 10th anniversary of their popular Ad-Aware security solution. That’s right, Ad-Aware has been on the market for a decade now, and Lavasoft decided that the best way to celebrate is by releasing a new version of the software: Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition (personally I prefer to think of it as Ad-Aware 2009).

“We’re proud to announce: Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition - Free, Plus, and Pro versions are now available! Building on 10 years of advanced malware detection, Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition provides comprehensive malware protection without loading down your system’s resources, bringing you the core competence you need to stay safe online,” says Lavasoft.

Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition comes with a series of improvements and enhancements. The first thing you will notice is that it fairs a lot better in terms of speed and efficiency, not only compared to previous Ad-Aware versions, but also compared to other security software solutions (the competition). Here are some concrete figures to put things into perspective: when performing a scan, Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition will use 18% of your CPU power, will scan 36MB per second, and will take it 74% easier on your system’s RAM (compared to Ad-Aware 2008).

As usual, Lavasoft is offering a free version of their software to those users out there that would rather not spend their hard earned cash on security solutions. If you do not fall into that category and you already have an Ad-Aware Pro or and Ad-Aware Plus license, you will be able to upgrade for free and thus benefit from the 4 protection levels that Lavasoft’s application has to offer: Ad-Watch Live, Anti-Virus Protection, Advanced Toolbox, and Real-Time Network Protection.

If you would like to get Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition, a download location is available here.