Very impressive!

I ran across this site today while reading the forums at dslreports.com. At first, I was impressed that Sergei had taken the time to document the strengths and weaknesses of every popup stopper software I had ever heard of. It sure sounded like a good service... and it appeared that his source of revenue for his endeavours was a panel of Google-sponsored ad links.

What I hadn't immediately noticed as a link at the top of his homepage - "Pop-Up Disabler". I clicked on it a few minutes ago, and it took me to an information page describing a utility he had written himself.

Finally, the reason for the website became clear. This man had researched all the popup stoppers on the market so that he could design one that was better.

My personal favourite has been Pop-Up Stopper Free Edition from Panicware. It's amazingly simple, really. It stops popups. Period. If there are things you want to appear, you simply hold down the Ctrl- key while clicking, and the box appears. I've always thought the product was awesome.

So today, I installed the new Pop-Up Disabler. It was eerie, really. No messages of any kind. Did I need to turn it on? There was nothing in the system tray. I looked at the list of programs on my machine. There was a new link for Pop-Up Disabler. But looking at the entry, there were simply entries for uninstalling, going to the website, and viewing the help file. Nothing about enabling the software.

Alright... I guess I'd have to test it. The first test... visit a few sites hosted by Yahoo/Geocities and Tripod. Tripod's pop-up ads had always been effectively blocked by Pop-Up Stopper, even though a visible "blink" was always noticeable as the popup came up and was instantaneously killed. With the new blocker, the blink never happened. Just a main screen, with no hint of popup. Then I tried going to a Geocities site. I guess I was a bit disappointed that the stupid floating ad appeared (it also appears with Pop-Up Stopper), but I understand that only one pop-up stopper on the entire market can stop those ads - and that program is not free. What really impressed me was when I tried to leave comments on blogs. The Pop-Up Stopper program automatically blocks the popup comment boxes. I have, over time, become accustomed to holding the Ctrl-key when I wish to comment. With the new software installed, clicking on a comment link brought up the comment box - no problem.

I'm going to keep this program installed a bit longer to see how it works, and to verify that it doesn't have any spyware component. But until then, I'm ready to give a preliminary endorsement to this product.