I did some tests on XP a few years ago, to see how bad it was. I ran no anti-virus, no firewall, no anti-spyware, nothing. Used the system carefully for over 4

I did some tests on XP a few years ago, to see how bad it was. I ran no anti-virus, no firewall, no anti-spyware, nothing. Used the system carefully for over 4 months with no problems. Web browsing, web development and bittorrent. Normal stuff. So I can safely say, while windows has its downfalls, I think 90% of the time the problem is down to the end user. (though obviously its a nice extra layer of protection)