In regards to AV Comparatives, I responded to why their tests aren't relevant in in the real world here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1284321. The bottom line is that detection rates as high as 97% are generally regarded by industry experts as inflated (John Viega says in one of his books that some people estimate actual detection rates to be around 30%). AV companies themselves would never use that number as a part of their marketing campaigns. You'll note that on the product pages of the AV products tested, the numbers aren't listed. If a 99.6% detection rate was actually. valid, don't you think it would be displayed in large and bold letters on the product page?
I'm not saying people shouldn't run AV, but we need to be honest about the actual capabilities of these products. Even if actual detection is only 30%, 30% is better than 0%.
1. I've been doing virus and malware cleanups for people since -- well, since 1995 or so, at least.
2. I've recently begun presenting seminars on basics for novice computer users.
3. I was among the first to clean up the rather nasty kbiwkm rootkit a while back. One of my clients was infected with it before there had been an a/v response, and before anything could be learned about it anywhere.
4. I've recently begun to get contacted internationally (well, from Canadian individuals, anyway) to clean up websites infected with various sorts of nasty bugs.
5. Most importantly, I follow the results and reports from av-comparatives.org religiously; they're not affiliated with any particular antivirus vendor, product, or group, their tests appear to be very thorough, their methods appear to be fairly rigorous, and they provide reasonable results for a number of different metrics related to antivirus products, all in a regularly-released report that's quite readable.
6. I started a company three years ago to address the various flaws that I saw in the I.T. industry, one of which was the number of people that got hit with viruses over and over again. I have a very, very low rate of repeat virus cleanups for my clients, many of whom are novices that are particularly susceptible to multiple computer virus vectors. You might feel like being snarky and saying that I never hear back from them because they don't care for the service, but then again, I'm currently experiencing my third straight year of 300% growth, and most of my "marketing" comes from word-of-mouth.
But, I don't have a blog, so of course I'm not an expert. Carry on.
edit: ohbtw, two of today's systems that were infected with rogue antivirus also had up-to-date and active McAfee installations, which isn't at all unusual. But, yeah, you're right, it's much better now than it used to be.