personally, I am trying to hold onto Win98 for as long as possible, as the 'features' Micro$oft put into more recent versions allow a lot of this to happen.

And..[pardon the preaching]...(as I have posted about many times before) one way to avoid email viruses AND spam is to check and delete unwanted email BEFORE it is downloaded ...using an email scanner like EPrompter or PopTray or ScanMailBox. Add to this a good anti-virus program for those little things that sneak in on mail from friends, and you have a decent chance of staying clean. Of course, a firewall is a MUST. I just switched from Outpost to Kerio..mostly because of the 'feel'.

With all of these things in place, I have seen ONE (1) virus in 7 years on the WWW!...and NO lost files, no virus related crashes, no crazy messages about Bill Gates, no disabled programs.

Doing without these protections in this day and age is like playing Russian Roulette...especially if you use Outlook Express, Windows XP and Internet Explorer! You CAN do everything you are now doing without those MicroSoft products which are known targets and needing regular patches!

(I will now go and knock on wood, which I keep in great abundance.)