I have personally tried all of the virus protection methods discussed here so far, and AVG is the best in my opinion. The others provide better than average protection, but AVG is the best at protecting me. I have downloaded thousands of viruses in the past year and none of them have gotten through AVG's resistance shield. The purpose of the resistance shield is to stop a virus before it penitrates your system. Another good thing about AVG, is there are frequent updates available. I usually update my virus defintions at least once a day. They're always coming up with cures for the newest viruses. One thing that I would not recommend to the non-average user is AVG's other free services such as anti-spyware, anti-adware, and anti-rootkit. These programs work fine for the average user, but these programs are nothing but a pain the the butt to a more advanced user. AVG's anti-spyware blockes things such as Utorrent and other bittorrent clients. It also will not allow you to download a setup .exe file from the internet very easily. It totally blocks all access to your computer to anyone or anything, which is great for the average user that doesn't do much more than get online, use ms office, and play some games and maybe go on msn every now and then, but trust me, If you like doing things like downloading torrents and doing other untrustworthy online things, than AVG anti-spyware is not for you. It just causes a lot of trouble. I used to secure my own computer manually before AVG. The other anti-virus systems out there weren't very good at the time. It became more and more complicated for me to keep up with the hackers and viruses, so when AVG came out, I nabbed it. I could do a much better job at protecting my computer manually, but it takes hours. Not only that, but when you have 162 computers, it's impossible to keep up with it all manually. AVG is a lifesaver to me. Avira AntiVir is a pretty good match for AVG now, but I just like the style and ease of AVG. As of now, Avira AntiVir and AVG are the only antivirus systems I would ever trust my computer with.