Well,

the problem with these ‘home-made’ tests that employ large collections of old viruses is that they can hardly rate the real scanner effeciency. You may or may not be familiar with the term ‘in the wild’ that is used to pinpoint viruses that are actually ‘out there’ (that is, are seen, anywhere in the world, among ‘normal people’). You may be surprised that this is not something vague – the ‘in the wild’ list is actually well maintained and monthly updated. It contains hundreds of viruses, and lots of these viruses come in variants. To see the current list, follow e.g. this link: http://www.avast.com/i_idt_25.html .

And here are my points:

  1. The probability that you will be infected by a non- in-the-wild virus is almost zero.
  2. avast! catches all in-the-wild viruses, including all their variants.
  3. Beside the ‘static detection rate’ factor, other pros/cons of an AV product need to be considered when rating it. Most notably, the speed at which new updates are issued in case of outbreaks, and the relibility with which these updates are delivered to the end user.

Vlk