Best Anti Virus? Help

[jeremy]

I'm starting to question my own judgement. I still think, and tell
people,
that I recommend AVG above all others; first of all, it's free for
stand-alone home desktop users. Second of all, it doesn't really
screw up
that often.

But Symantec/Norton is still so prevelant. I never liked it, when
something
goes wrong with it, it goes very wrong, and I think it's over-priced.

McCaffee I'm not a big fan of, of course there are Trend Micro,
Kaperski and
other fringe (yet reputable) programs.

Still, people look at me like I've got two heads when I say that I
don't
like Symantec/Norton. Name recognition goes a long way.

What say you?

[Barry Watzman]

Norton had gotten horrible and had also gotten a justly deserved
horrible reputation, but that was 4-5 years ago. They have completely
turned the product around since about 2007, and there is very broad
agreement among pretty much ALL of the evaluation sites that their
product is either the best now or one of the best (note: This applies
only to the last 2-3 years; if you go back further, Norton was indeed
"God awful"). The product I recommend is Norton Internet Security.
It's not name recognition; rather, your perception of Norton is outdated.

For "free" products, Avast and AVG have been the usual products of
choice, but that, too, has changed. In October, Microsoft released
their own free AV product, and it's now generally considered to be the
free product of choice. It's name is Microsoft Security Essentials, and
it can be downloaded at Microsoft.com. It's free, but it only installs
on fully activated "genuine" copies of XP or later that pass all of the
Microsoft Product Activation (PA), Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) and
Software Protection Platform (SPP) validation tests.