I'm in the same camp as the parent poster. I refuse to go near AV stuff. I have been connected to the net for many, many years and I have yet to be infected. "How do you know that?" you ask? Well, on occasion I have run one of the web-based scanners just to silence naysayers. It has never found a single thing. Since I also don't do the reinstall treadmill, if I had ever been infected once in the last 2 or 3 years it would have shown up.

Step one is never using a MS product for email.

Step two is filtering out all of the junk on the web.

Step three is never clicking on "yes" or "agree" unless you understand what's happening.