In reply to a post by leej:

So I eventually just dumped it in favour of Kapersky which doesn't seem to have any of the above problems.

Apart from doing odd things to the network stack, so ping times and speed tests go haywire. None of them are perfect, they ALL mess with the operating system at a very low level, they all install low level code for every update that hasn't usually been very well tested.

AV is a nightmare.

In reply to a post by bsanotrun:

Nobody using Linux ?

I use FreeBSD for file serving and email. All email is passed through ClamAV and read with a text mode browser (mutt, with lynx to turn HTML email into text). I have tried kmail etc, but do not like them.

For Windows 7 I use Microsoft Security Essentials (free) and Malwarebytes (paid for), and do not use a mail reader.

I have only once been Trojaned. My fault. I had a zip file of dubious origin, containing further compressed files. Clicked on a supposed self extracting archive and later the machine started misbehaving. Picked what I really wanted to keep from the machine with the (LINUX) System Recovery CD (worth getting to know) with FTP to a FreeBSD machine and checked it with ClamAV, and fitted a new hard disk.

Did something similar to extract wanted (irreplaceable photographs) from a daughter's machine, which was crawling with malware.

I'm with StephenTodd here. Avast free and occasional Malwarebytes scan to flush out the things Avast doesn't find. Not a Chrome user but Firefox with Adblock+ and Ghostery gives a pleasant experience. It's only when browsing without these add-ons you realise how horrible things can be.

I've also used Microsoft's AV and have no complaints. The trouble with any AV software is that you never really know how good it is. Avast usually tells you when it's blocking something. It caugth a dodgy email this morning but I would have caught that myself without Avast. It has missed other dodgy email attachments but again I catach them myself. What you never know about is the website nasties that it fails to catch. Hence you are fairly reliant on expert reviews.

Note: Ghostery can sometimes block some links you actually want to use. Even on the Barclays bank site. Just exemot these on a case by case basis.

Is there not a site somewhere that has all sorts of harmless nasties that you can see how well your AV product is performing?