Well said, misophist.

And the emphasis must be placed on up to date. I get a "hit" from my Norton auto-update about every 2 to 3 days, indicating that some new "signatures" have been added to deal with "new" viruses.

I'd get very nervous if I was using week old AV without an update.

There has been quite a lot of news media talk about 3 or 4 recent virus attacks, and these infections are doing a lot of damage. ALL of the recent ones have been known for long enough that fixes have been available, for weeks if not months; and so far as I've heard, these new "plagues" have not affected anyone who had current updates/fixes installed.

It's also important to keep your operating system and other software up to date. With newer Win systems, you can set up an automatic download of critical updates (you have to ok any installation). With older systems, you need to make periodic visits to the update sites.

John