You're wasting your time, buddy. There are several organizations who devote their entire day to testing anti-virus software. ICSA certification states antivirus X,Y, and Z detect K% of viruses in "the wild" (where K > J% of virus in "the wild").
Most antivirus software is ranked based on ISCA certification but when you think of it, why would you need protection against a virus that's noncirculated? Well, I think you should think twice and I imagine organizations who rely on security feel the same way. If your system integrity is a vital option to you then it's worth doing research and it's worth paying a couple of dollars.
There is no way for a large majority of users to protect themselves against *all* viruses. If completely concerned about that, don't use your computer. If you're geniunely concerend with that, then you should start looking for several complementary pieces of security software; the first and foremore being rootkit protection! Kaspersky AV has built in rootkit protection, registry protection, application integrity, and some other things. Albeit, it's rootkit protection is not foolproof, just like all security software, but it does provide an added layer of security that other antivirus developers don't. Studies, from where, I know not, but studies have shown that Kaspersky AV detects 99.1% of viruses compared to NOD32's 97.7% and Norton detects 97.1% (These are all *great* numbers). Kaspersky has the fatest outbreak release time in the industry. With the discovery of a new virus, Kaspersky generally releases a fix for it within 1.5 hours (Symantec generally releases fixes in ~9-10 hours). Kaspersky, by default, checks for updates every hour automatically (this can be disabled) and their updates are generally ~75kb as opposed to Symantec's 9mb or more. In no way am I saying symantec is a less than desirable solution because I'm convinced if you don't make Kaspersky somewhat "annoying" you'll lose it's true security benifits and I've used Zonelabs firewall in conjuction with their antivirus and their firewall picks up tidbits security threats that the antivirus doesn't. Again, their are pro's and con's to everything. For one, Kaspersky is based in Moscow and although I think their tech. support service is free, US users will pay and arm and a leg to utilize their free support and thus we are left with no choice but email correspondence (which, from what I hear, is very good). Kaspersky also has the ability to throttle it's priority so that it will constantly scan things without really obviously degrading system performance.
The moral of the story: if you get yourself an ICSA piece of software, you're in decent and/or pretty good hands. From there, it's more or less personal preference and how much research you do and how valid the research you've done is. Let me just reiterate one thing, I'm not saying anything bad about any of these virus scanners and if you're coming away with that impression than you're not reading carefully or I haven't made my point correctly. Either way, you should feel good with any ICSA certified piece of software because beyond that, you're taking a big leap of faith. If I haven't contradicted myself enough yet then I probably haven't said my piece but all in all,
) and ive done some tests - it passed em all! shame there isnt a program that sends a lot of fake viruses at once...so its the best of the best eh? reckon ill be getting it 
