Wlauzon - 11:13 pm on Aug 31, 2007 (gmt 0)

There is a wide range of problems out there, one of the most common is simply not keeping windows updated.

But the default configuration - especially on computers sold more than a couple years ago - was no firewall, no automatic updates, and only some crappy free version of Nortons.

I have seen far few problems on newer computers, and none with Vista (despite it's other problems).

But by far the biggest problem is peoples ignorance - opening email attachments even though the red warning is flashing, downloading totally unknown files, installing totally unknown "toolbars", and the like.

It is because of that that Vista went overboard on security - which can be pretty annoying at times, but in fact does do a much better job of protecting the non-guru's.

BTW, Windows Live is what I use for malware/virus (I long ago removed any traces of Norton). I have installed it on a couple of relatives computers, and it seemed to take care of just about anything except one or two of the mal-toolbars, which needed some registry editing.