Battle of the anti-virus: What is the best software?

AV-Comparatives.org recently released the results of a malware removal tests with which they evaluated 16 anti-virus software solutions:

• Avast Professional Edition 4.8
• AVG Anti-Virus 8.5
• AVIRA AntiVir Premium 9.0
• BitDefender Anti-Virus 2010
• eScan Anti-Virus 10.0
• ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.0
• F-Secure AntiVirus 2010
• G DATA AntiVirus 2010
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010
• Kingsoft AntiVirus 9
• McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009
• Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0
• Norman Antivirus & Anti-Spyware 7.10
• Sophos Anti-Virus 7.6
• Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2010
• Trustport Antivirus 2009.

The test focused only on the malware removal/cleaning capabilities, therefore all used samples were samples that the tested antivirus products were able to detect. The main question was if the products are able to successfully remove malware
from an already infected/compromised system. The test report was aimed to typical home users. A further question was if the products are able to remove what they are able to detect.

Based on a scoring system that evaluated malware and leftovers removal capabilities, these were the results:
"None of the products performed “very good” in malware removal or removal of leftovers, based on those 10 samples. eScan, Symantec and Microsoft (MSE) were the only products to be good in removal of malware AND removal of leftovers", says the report. "Some products do not remove all registry entries on purpose (as long as they do not have any visible side effect for the user), e.g. if that helps to prevent reinfection by the same malware. Furthermore, in some cases it is not possible to know if the registry values (or the hosts file) were modified by the malware or by the user itself (or third-party utilities used by the user)."

To see which malware sample were used and why, and how the particular anti-virus solutions behaved, go here.