First Off Urs.. You Look Stunning In Green LOL. I Think You have several valid Points, but as far as the Freeware goes??? I will tell you what I run, and I know You Dislike Norton, because I have read several Thousand Threads and Posts, and seems to me You Hate Norton. Correct Me if I'm wrong. I run NIS08, Norton Antibot, Spybot S&D.. Free, AdAware 07, and SpywareBlaster.. Free (I feel is a necessity that no one speaks about). I also use Ccleaner several times a week. I ran the Scan that you so highly recommend and the results speak for themselves.
Not Disagreeing with you necesseraly, but just giving a different prospective. See Below for the Results after the Scan.