Avast may well be the best of the free ones but the freeware apps have been getting hammered as of late due to the adaptive nature of the new viruses which change their signature each time they are executed. Large definition databases are losing favor to behavior based detection in this new frontier, and the very best, by far, in this regard is Eset's NOD32. It is also the lightest on resources.
As for anti-spyware, we see much the same thing happening with the old free standbys Spybot and AdAware missing the mark. According to the last two anti-spyware shootouts conducted by av-test.org for PCWorld, Spyware Doctor 5.0 is the hands down winner. In second place now is AVG Anti-Spyware and falling to third spot is SpySweeper. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136206/article.html
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