What is a sure-fire way to find the very best anti-virus software?

Ever since I got my computer I’ve had several different anti virus softwares (All of them were free). My first (Norton) was, well, a horror story. It would be able to find viruses, but it could rarely remove them so I’m left with a sense of paranoia that one of 40 or so viruses that couldn’t be moved/removed would strike. or something. So, once the trial ran out on that I moved on to AVG version 7 trial. This was an absolutely great program. It found all of the viruses norton did and then some and removed all of them. it automatically scanned my computer in the background on startup and warned me whenever something was found or when there was a threat in progress. Of course, I got stupid and through a painful process accidentally made my AVG program effectively broken. So I went searching for it online only to find out it was replaced by AVG version 8 trial which I wound up downloading after struggling to remove AVG 7. And, honestly, I would have preferred my stock norton over avg 8. It barely did anything. I tried to start a full computer scan and it did nothing. I tried to schedule a scan and still nothing happened. So, I asked my sister (Who is great with computers) and a few other people in my school and at the end decided to go with avast. It’s not necessarily a bad program, but it hasn’t exactly satisfied me. It scans, which makes it many times better than avg 8 but I feel like it might be missing viruses. and that’s where I am today.

My problem is that it seems like the best anti virus software is as much a matter of opinion as halo vs. gears of war vs call of duty. Is there any way to find out what truly is the best free anti virus software, like a website to go to? What programs would you recommend? how would you rate my past programs (if you can)?

thanks