I personally use Avira, and after using many others (avast, norton, avg, panda, kaspersky, mcafee, etc.) I can say that Avira is my favorite. I also love COMODO firewall.
Spyware Doctor, Avast, or Microsoft Essentials.
Norton is terrible, Mcafee is worse, Kaspersky and NOD32 are the best. AVG and Avast are right in the low ranking line after mcafee and norton. Easy as that.
the best antivirus for me is....
AVG and Nod32.....
Avira
VIPRE
Malaware Bytes
Those would be more top 3.
I think the best antivirus at the moment is Avira.
My top three would consist of Avira, Norton and Avast, although it depends on the activities your doing.
I have been using NOD32 for years after trying out several different AVs. It is a nice balance of control and end-user interaction, with great detection (especially if you enable the webscanning function that scans all code, links, and files going through the ports normally used for surfing). While I usually don't endorse Microsoft products and it does have issues, I think that MSE is a pretty good free AV scanner, although it can be improved by tweaking it - one example is editing the registry to increase the frequency of update checking. Remember, AV software doesn't catch all types of malware as well, so I use it in conjunction with MBAM and COMODO firewall (only the firewall function).
I go for microsoft security essentials, I use it and I'm very happy with it. But I generally don't download files from places I don't trust.
Overall: I think that, McAfee - Norton - Microsoft Security Essential - Windows Defender (no choice there) - Other 3rd Part Anti-Viruses are terrible, no good computer memory leeching suckers.
Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 would be better if my laptop had not crashed all the time when it updates, I will try NOD32 next, then avira. These last three are the total best.