[jumpy]

Though I have a tendency to slate anything made by micro$oft, XP PRO has (thus far) been fairly immune to threats and the like. I'm not sure if this is to do with my common sense attitude to files and attachements/adverts etc or my plethora of firewall and antivirus, spyware and adware killers, 3rd party web browsers - Firefox. The last time I got a confirmes 'virus' .... can't remember. Last time I had confirmed spyware ...last week ZA flagged Gamespy as adware as it collects user data - in this case online rankings for a particular game I own (I have confirmed this). Same goes for installing apps etc, keep an eye on what they want to send out accross the net...
If the GF has to use my pc I let her use the guest account which has almost no privilages whatsoever. I don't think she can even download files with it hehe. But she has her own PC connected to the net with mine as a gateway, so if I'm protected with my firewall, so is she.
All of this can be a real drag when it comes to maintenance stuff, but given that I can't say I've ever had my system killed by something nasty I suppose it must be worth it.
On the other hand it would be nice to have a system where you could rely on the software to secure you from threats automatically, rather than having to employ expensive bouncers to keep an eye on your OS's 'revolving door policy'.