I just now got a virus with AVG. It got by McAffee as well. It didn't get by Kaspersky. I will try what you mentioned. You should realise that what is free to you is free to the hackers as well and is probably the first thing they test their virus against. I suggest that you occasionally do the free online test from Kaspersky.
Umm, about that free thing for hackers. Dude, they crack that stuff anyway. I'd like to think that I know the scene a bit. And trust me, they don't pay for anything. If anything, they spend their time trying to hack programs that charge.
When programs charge, it shows one thing. That the program is basically s*** and you have to pay full price to try it out and then you find out it's crap but by then they already have your money.
All the best programs out there are freeware and a lot of them open source. Firefox ring a bell, it's the most secure and best broweser out there, oh and did I mention it's free.
Do you know anything about firewalls? Comodo which is free, is currently one of the most powerful and effective firewalls out now. And with a tiny memory footprint.
Norton, which happens to be extremely expensive, is the biggest joke of an antivirus program. Besides the fact that it takes up about half your cpu and ram, the thing can't stop crap! And the people that have it, think "I paid x amount of money for it so it's gotta be the best". That's @%# @%@!@
I can go on and on about how many awesome free programs are out there. But I am not going to waste my time telling you.