OSNews

But aren't you a tad worried about MS's business practices

No. If I were to worry and otherwise boycott greedy/evil businesses, I wouldn't have phone service or electricity.

and the whole bag of vulnerabilities that the OS has by default?

Nothing that a decent firewall and AV won't fix.

I set up WinXP for a friends PC. After downloading and installing SP1 WinXP needed AT LEAST 16MB's worth of updates before safely plugging that machine to the 'net.

Broadband - takes like 5 minutes.

Not to mention updating AV software

Called auto update - runs in the middle of the night.

Not to mention updating AV software and installing and updating spyware removal tools.

With a little bit of common sense, these aren't needed.

Yes, I could download and install alternative browsers - Firefox - and email clients - Thunderbird -, but most home users won't. They want their machine working.

So, if they're not willing to do that, then what are you suggesting? To download a Linux ISO?

I've another friend that surfed into a page doing some university research (or so he says). He called to tell me that the home page is another one and he can't change it. Pop-ups are pop-pop-popping everytime he connects to the web, and he can't access his cd-rom.

You've already answered this one - it's called not using IE.

Now you tell me, is there any worth in running an insecure OS that lets other people know what you are doing online?

Yes, assuming your job depends on it and you need to eat. Get it??