I have to agree, I'm perfectly happy with avast after over two years use, I don't ask 100% of any AV this is an almost unattainable goal. So I look to layered defence using specialist tools and not just one single product. avast for anti-virus, ewido for Trojan detection and removal, SpywareBlaster, Spybot S&D, AdAware. I also look to a firewall which gives powerful outbound protection should something manage to get past my defences.
I don't use IE as my primary browser, because if something exploits that it has effectively exploited your OS because it is so integrated in to it. Not to mention the activeX, BHO potential for attracting malware. Also ensure that you don't use programs that access the internet whilst using an account with administrator privileges unless there is no alternative.
Whilst browsing or collecting email, etc. if you get infected then the malware by default inherits the same permissions that you have for your user account. So if the user account has administrator rights, the malware has administrator rights and can reap havoc. With limited rights the malware can't put files in the system folders, create registry entries, etc. This greatly reduces the potential harm that can be done by an undetected or first day virus, etc.
Check out the link to DropMyRights (in my signature below) - Browsing the Web and Reading E-mail Safely as an Administrator. This obviously applies to those NT based OSes that have administrator settings, winNT, win2k, winXP.
Add to that a dash of common sense and you have a very good level of protection, further backed up by a back-up/recovery strategy in the form of weekly hard disk images should the worst happen it takes minutes to restore an image of my hard disk.
