I would seriously like about 5 minutes alone in a locked room with any one of the self impressed idiots who think it’s a great chuckle to destroy other people’s ability to use their computers. They don’t give a ruddy beep whether you are playing mindless games or researching a serious medical condition. They couldn’t care less whether you are well-off and can afford the hardware replacements or just scraping by and really needed that machine to eke out your meager living. They aren’t the least bit interested in whether you are happy-go-lucky or on the sharp precipice of deep depression. They spend impressive amounts of effort into figuring out how to get their little darling destructo program past every protection yet known, and how to keep you from being able to do anything about it, even when you can find and identify it. They would rather screw up your life than do anything genuinely constructive, and they are a**-hs of the highest order. May they all come down with a chronic oozing pox that eats their own ability to weasle a living, and find no cure until they figure out how to be constructive citizens of the world instead of destructive baa*s!
There… I feel some better. Thank you for allowing me to rant. I’d advise keeping at least two arms lengths away for at least an hour.
Ah… a wise man who recognizes the symptoms!.. and at my age PMS stands for “Perpetual Menopausal Syndrome”… or “Prepare for Monumental Snapishness” .. and mess with my computer, my email, my artwork, and my ebay sniping… er… I mean… shopping, and you are gonna face one p*ssed off mother of a dog!!
If you must run Windows, you need extra protection. Internet explorer and Outlook Express have proven ongoing security holes and shouldn’t be used at all.
I don’t have a problem with using any OS. They’re just tools that do a job, and I’ll use whichever is best for a particular situation.
I just have a strong dislike for mac and linux users who shout about how bad windows is all the time, just because their operating systems have such an insignificant user base no-one can be bothered to write viruses for them.
At home I like to use run a wide range of games and have the largest choice of applications available to me without having to muck about with config setttings or whatever, so I run windows.
There are four reasons why I don’t just switch to Linux and never look back:
Windows has the huge, cool, commercial games (and if you like playing the latest and greatest of them, be prepared to buy an entirely new computer every 4 to 6 years). Of course, in fairness, there are ways to make most of these games work under Linux as well…
Frontpage. This program is one of the few times Microsoft did everything right. Of course, in fairness, there are ways to make Frontpage work under Linux as well…
Audio system support. This is a real sticking point for me; I have a pretty nice audio system for my computer and as of yet there is no real Linux support for it at all. If they ever either release the X-Fi specs to the open source community (not going to happen), or Creative comes up with its own Linux driver for X-Fi, one major obstacle toward my ditching windows forever is gone.
The VPN at work doesn’t have a Linux-based client. This isn’t a show-stopper–some of my coworkers have figured out ways to connect with Linux / BSD --but because of what I do, I need to stay with a supported solution.
The last two obstacles are the strongest.
But, in all fairness, there are no 100% secure operating systems. There are cases were Linux and Unix have been breached.
And, of course, no matter what kind of computer you use, the biggest security hole is often found betwixt the chair and the keyboard.
Really, XP was a nice OS. Looking back on 98, NT and 2000; XP has been realitively trouble free. Unfortunately, it is near impossible to install the service packs without DSL so home installation and maintenance is difficult. Really, it is almost as expensive to maintain and clean up an old system as it is to just buy a new one. Vista looks like it is a step back in function, and so I think that my next box will most likely be a Debian variant (Stable, does what I would want it to, but not cutting edge).
As for OS X, constantly having to pay for OS X upgrades to use basic programs on a “premium” system annoys me to no end.
Linux isn’t exactly as bullet-proof as people think it is. Just one example
Like Chris said, they’re just tools to get a job done.
I use both PC and Mac for different applications, most of those are prefferential differences nowadays.
For software deveolopment/school, I use my PC; for graphic design/photography, etc. I use my Mac.
If you know what you’re doing enough to efficiently run Linux, securing a PC isn’t exactly rocket science (even with vista, as convoluted and overcomplicated as it is)
In my limited experience, many pages created with FrontPage are so riddled with non-standard, MS-specific code that they are often unusable by any browser other than IE. How is this getting “everything right”?
May they all come down with a chronic oozing pox that eats their own ability to weasle a living, and find no cure until they figure out how to be constructive citizens of the world instead of destructive baa*s! 
