You are very right about the user problem, Parker. To this day I still hear people use the rationale "I only open attachments from people I know", which is how most virii are distributed these days. It's even worse from people who have a habit of prefacing 90% of the email that they send out with those hated letters "FW". I already have one person who forwards crap to me all the time filtered so if the letters FW appear in her subject line that it automatically gets roundcanned.

These most recent email worms (like W32.Badtrans.B@mm) specifically spread with the help of the Outlook user address books, so if you don't run Outlook you can still receive the virus and become infected if you open the attachment. You just won't spread it.

Owning virus protection software isn't enough. with hudreds of new viruses being discovered monthly the virus definitions from July 2000 aren't going to help you when the latest Nimbda, SirCam, Code Red, or any other worm hits. And you'll lose data someday and kick yourself in the butt for not keeping up-to-date. Update at LEAST monthly, preferrably weekly. The more often you update the quicker the downloads are. Normally just a couple minutes.

If you have any questions about which virus software to buy, how to update your virus patterns, or anything else like that go ahead and either post it in this thread or email me and I (and other geeky anglers) will help out.