A rather trite little article that appeared in my local newsrag some time ago, under a Cox News Service byline, quoted (without very specific traceability):

"You are told that Linux, Unix or a Macintosh using an operating system based on Linux are all bulletproof, while Windows is a time bomb. I won't argue that Windows is perfectly secure. But a study by the federal government found that in 2005, "out of 5,198 reported vulnerabilities, 812 were Windows operating system vulnerabilities, while 2,328 were Unix/Linux operating vulnerabilities and 2,058 were multiple operating system vulnerabilities.""

Similar realities mostly apply to the differences between browsers used with Windows.

A good AV, preferably with effective AS and anti-phishing and with an effective firewall is necessary, regardless of what browser you use.

I will note that while I have an incredibly slow connection, the times when the "stalls for ad pimping" are most noticeable are when I've just rebooted and made an intial connection on my dialup service. My AV always checks for updates then, so the connection is even slower than usual - giving me time to notice what people with a faster connection would be unlikely to see, much less be able to trace specifically to the pimps.

Foolestroupe - In IE, v6 or my current v7, I use the Page|SaveAs .mht, which doesn't make a lot of difference here, but on pages with "linked junk" it all gets encapsulated into a single "web archive file" instead of a file with a separate folder full of garbage that you have to keep together. It's a much more stable "save" than plain vanilla html, and still opens in your browser when you want to look at it.

John