You've heard of our MVPs - Here at Lavasoft, we now also have MVTs!

We'd like to take a moment to give a well-deserved thank you to our Most Valuable Testers - beta testers that is. While we are truly grateful to all of our beta testers around the world who helped shape Ad-Aware 2008, we'd like to call attention to four particular testers. These four have gone above and beyond the call of beta testing to make significant contributions to our testing process with the quality of their analysis and reporting. Meet our MVTs and find out what they have to say about Ad-Aware 2008:

• Ian, an 18 year old student from the United Kingdom, is hoping to study for a Masters Degree in chemistry at University College London this fall. He is currently taking "A" Level exams in chemistry, physics, biology and math. Outside of his school and self-proclaimed "geek" lives, he keeps tropical fish and helps out at a local scout group.

"I've used Ad-Aware for a long time now and jumped at the opportunity to help improve the next version of the software. I enjoyed testing the software and hope it goes on to protect many people. One of the great things about Ad-Aware is that I can just leave it to get on with its job and it will - with no input from me. A great piece of software has definitely just go better," Ian says.

• Kyle, a 27 year old Ohio, USA resident, has been a freelance Quality Assurance Analyst for the past 9 years. He is currently enrolled in a Master's Degree program in Information Technology with an emphasis on Security and boasts a 4.0 GPA.  Even though he was raised on a Microsoft Windows machine, he is also proficient with Mac and Linux, and is learning Unix. When he is not tinkering with computers, Kyle can be found playing his PS3 or the Wii with his family, watching movies, hiking, fishing, and even taking a nice bike ride just to escape the everyday life.

"Every time I create a new Windows machine for me or for a client, Ad-Aware is one of the first programs I install on the machine.  It keeps the OS safer and helps clean the system from unwanted software," Kyle says.

• Gregory, who resides in Arizona, USA, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Engineering and Wharton Schools and is a US Navy veteran. His work experiences lie in the fields of software engineering for financial and medical software. For the last 10 years, he has been involved with research and software development for the advancement of technologies involving fine-motor skills research and application for identification of human movement disorders at NeuroScript LLC.

"I am glad to have participated in your beta testing, particularly since I have used and continue to use your product. If I am to use a product, I like the ability to express a voice in its function, in addition to assisting in ironing out the kinks (a software engineer's job is never done)," Gregory says.

• Miguel is a 23-year-old student who currently lives in Portugal. One of his biggest assets is the ability to speak five different languages and understand a few others, a useful skill for an assortment of jobs. Apart from performing tasks in the IT area, Miguel has a passion for Classics, especially Roman and Greek civilizations; Ovid and Homer are among his favorite writers. He strongly believes that IT should serve as a bridge between our past and future.

"I signed up for the Ad-Aware beta test because I feel that it is important to help companies make the best possible software, and we, users, also need to play an important role in product development," Miguel says.

Thanks for a job well done, MVTs!