How responsive are they

Andreas Marx Anti-virus researcher at of Av-Test.org has concluded an annual round of testing to see how well the various anti-virus programs responded to recent outbreaks of viruses and worms. The results appear to show that while the major anti-virus products are still having trouble keeping up with the massive glut of new malware, most are starting to do a better job.

In his study, he measured how quickly the anti-virus products responded with updates enabling them to detect variants of the largest 16 Windows worm outbreaks of 2005, including "Bagle," "Bobax," "Bropia," "Fatso," "Kelvir," "Mydoom," "Mytob," "Sober" and "Wurmark."

Average Response Time --> Product Name
Between 0 and 2 hours ------> Kaspersky
Between 2 and 4 hours ------> BitDefender, Dr. Web, F-Secure, Norman, Sophos
Between 4 and 6 hours ------> AntiVir, Command, Ikarus, Trend Micro
Between 6 and 8 hours ------> F-Prot, Panda
Between 8 and 10 hours -----> AVG, Avast, eTrust-INO, McAfee, VirusBuster
Between 10 and 18 hours ----> Symantec
Between 18 and 20 hours ----> eTrust-VET