1) my experience says spybot is 'adware-free'
but do stay away from these
anti-spywares
*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22829&highlight=stay+away
2) regarding quickheal; no question its a pretty good anti-virus. but i think it has too many start-ups. some unrequired, like their quickheal msngr.
also after every scan it generates a hidden junk/log file QH32CHK, in EACH folder, which when totalled up, adds up to a lot of disk space.
i had pitted quickheal against avast and compared it for almost a week. after visiting nasty sites, i used to scan 'temp int files' and 'system32' folders with both. avast ended up detecting more virii !
and yes quickheal does scan for spyware too !