MSE Voted Best Free Anti-Virus!

Agreed jimbo. For anyone with some nous and who pays attention Virus' shouldn't be a problem. A year or so ago I dropped virus scanning entirely without ill effects.

Malware on the other hand is a severe issue. Even care and awareness do not ensure safety (tho they may help).

AV suites have improved dramatically on this front and even the AV comparatives test indicate how far most of the AV Suites have come both in identification of malware and its often complex removal.

It seems that none of them - or firewalls for that matter - are very good on the PREVENTION front. The rootkit/keylogger issue is yet another problem area tho I'm hoping MSE is good at this too. Swimming along in the dark on that at the moment (thus the value of independent testing). I'm using Keyscrambler for that, which works as an add-on in Firefox and IE. Good reviews too.

It's always interesting the comparisons of the human body and malware/virus prevention.

Humans are easy for bacteria and viruses to get into, but our immune system is very robust in destroying them quickly, before they can do harm.

Same with Charles description of AV suites.