I've gone to the 'opposition', in the form of Norton Internet Security, as it is preinstalled on a new Win 7 PC I took delivery of a few days ago. I hope it will be OK and possible to fully remove if I feel the need to in time. I don't mind paying the reduce price for a year, but I daresay it will rocket up towards £40/year after that.
I feel quite sad in some ways to be going away from Avast Free, but it is quite nice to have an integrated product for a change. I reckon I'll be back at some point, but I will check into here to see how Avast is faring.
Oh just thought - my sig will be all wrong now! Better leave it for now.