The MRG (Malware Research Group) again tested 18 Antivirus Programs with great results for Avast!
Avast detected 99,2% of all samples and could reach the 4th place.
It detected only 0,4% less than the winner of this competition.
The OS used for this test was Win XP SP3 and it was an On-Demand Scan Test…
http://malwareresearchgroup.com/?page_id=2
yours
onlysomeone
Why am I not surprised of the lower detection rate of AVG? ;D
Anyway, Norton, Kaspersky, BitDefender, McAfee and Nod32 was lower than avast in this test.
COMODO and the latest ClamAV are doing a poor job (yet).
Very good performance by avast! 
8)
Actually avast! came 3th , because AVIRA and a-squared share 1st place. : ;D
GData (which uses avast as one of its two engines) came third with 99.4% so with two scanning engines it only managed an extra 0.2% increase.
All in all avast did well considering it doesn’t have heuristics ;D, roll on avast 5 ;D
Then look at the latest AV-Comparatives on-demand test result and see the difference as a greater number of malware samples was used in that test. G DATA had 99.8% detection rate. 
oh! as always Avira did the best job, No.1! 99.6% , Thanks to this German company!
avast! did good job too, 99.2% is a good rate, hope alwil team would work to get better rank in next test anyway they did a job better than Norton and McAfee and that poor Comodo…
Avast! 5 will own i can say that
I hope, I wish they do
Avast! 4.8 Pro didnt got heuristic and the test of this product is really awesome !!! Imagine Avast! 5 !!! I think im going jump off of my screen on July 2009 if its continue lol
-= Huh… I can’t access the the comparatives… I am always directed to the Terms and Conditions page…
-= BTW, I found some weird stuff that highlighting the terms & conditions page shows some weird letters… Haha… ;D
everything is ok here 
try to open the page through a proxy server such as Tor or…
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=9671.msg372058#msg372058
-= At last I’ve finally accessed the comparatives… Maybe, its just that, yesterday wasn’t my day… ;D
-= Thank you…
take in mind the set is last year malware so technically it’s all about stuff not so ‘hot’ anymore …