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today I did a full system scan and had 150 files of Trojan.smoaler and Trojan.gen that were supposedly resolved by the scan.

Nothing is full-proof. I personally don't care for Norton for a couple of reasons:

1. You have to pay for it every year.
2. Nothing is full-proof...not even software you pay for.
3. Norton seems to have a pretty heavy footprint, in that things just seem to run much slower as Norton enforces its live protection policies.

Now I'm not saying to go out and dump it, but it just isn't my particular tool of choice.

When people bring their computers to me for repair/malware removal, I normally install Microsoft Security Essentials. It's certainly better than nothing, and I prefer it because:

1. It's free.
2. Nothing is full-proof. Might as well get the same adequate protection with a free product.
3. Footprint is generally light, computer seems to behave just as quickly with it as without it.
4. People will gag at this one, but...it's by Microsoft. If I'm trying to protect a computer with a Microsoft OS on it, than who knows the important system files, weaknesses, exploits and such as well as Microsoft would.

In all, I recommend:

1. Have some sort of antivirus protection. Microsoft Security Essentials if you don't want to pay for it.
2. Keep an updated copy of the free scanner from malwarebytes.org. Run an update and scan at least every two or so weeks.

That should be enough for most users to stay relatively safe.