My experience has been a little different in this regard. IME providers of free anti-virus and -spyware programs have a spotty track record in keeping up with new viruses and spyware. Sometimes you get what you pay for and, IMHO, it is only natural that a firm that gets paid to do this will have more resources than an outfit that gives it away.
I use Norton corporate edition now on my company computers, but before I grew to that point I was using off the shelf Norton software, which worked very well. Before using the Norton stuff I had a lot more trouble with viruses and spyware, and I tried a lot of free apps (AVG, Macaffee, others) before biting the bullet and paying for something more powerful.
If you are going to be downloading a lot of stuff you will want to choose your protection software carefully as a lot of the virus crap is embedded in files that people download.
Just my $.02




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