a PC with a few files on is just something not really worth that much in the scheme of things.

uhhhh.......WOW.

I take it your PC and what's on it means more to you than others things in life or in my example - perhaps your life itself??? If you keep archives of your data on some form of backup medium then a PC is nothing more than [generalizing] 48 hours of re-installation if it all goes pear shaped.

I'm not stating that re-installation isn't a pain in the ass but I just don't follow the doom and gloom mongering end of the world scenarios about using IE. Absolutely agreed it's the least secure, it's the least standards driven (to me that's the major bugbear with the product - but I gripe as a developer not a user) but it takes more than a secure piece of software to be secure. Exploits are one thing, common sense is another - hence my comment on e-mail attachments.

Anyways, I'm not questioning anyone's choice here - if that's what you want then that's cool with me. Just don't expect me to have the same idealogy.

Unfortunately common sense means nothing when you can visit an innoculous Web site and have code downloaded and executed on your machine.