Information Security is my occupation and I would duly disagree. I think there are some crappy A/V programs, and I also think that many A/V's don't work well at cleaning up an already hosed system, but the rate of growth of viruses is accelerating, and they're becoming much more sneaking in their purpose. The motives behind viruses has changed from destruction or the "wow - look at me" factor, to a financial motive - getting your computer infected with a trojan to either steal your ID and financial information and/or turning your computer into a member of a bot net. Other fun things are installing adware that will bug the crap out of you while you surf, but most of them don't appear noticeable when you get infected, because the writers don't get their money if you fix your computer.
