John (20 yrs in business FIXING computers, A+ Certification, TAUGHT computers at the local High School for nine years...)

Actually, PSUE's comments are very true. Until they were beaten over the head with it and about to lose their Windows plum to OS X (and maybe Linux, if you happen to be an RMS fanboi), MSFT didn't consider security all that important. You couldn't go a day without some new exploit hitting the wire. WinME? Yeah, don't go there. No AV can protect a wayward click? Actually, quite a few of them do (and you can't blame them if the user then ignores the big red danger sign that says "THIS IS A BLEEPING VIRUS! YOU DON'T DESERVE TO USE A COMPUTER IF YOU DISREGARD THIS NOTICE AND RUN IT ANYWAYS!" Leaky? You betcha... check out the C$ share sometime.

As for your string of "creds"... unless the A+ exam was seriously revamped since I considered taking it 20 years ago and shook my head in disbelief (it didn't even address the question of IRQ and I/O address conflicts, and this was in the pre-PnP days), that cert means jack squat. Teaching computers might also mean little... most of the kids in my school could have driven circles around our HS computer "teacher," who should have been shown the door in favor of one of the bearded math teachers or the the junior high's pencil-neck. Business of it? Ok, I'll give you that... maybe, but then again, I've been building my own boxes for 15 years now, and know enough to know I want to part in fixing someone else's virus-ridden third-hand piece of cow dung.