At the time I was using Windows 98 and I got infected by a worm sent to me
by a friend (W32.KAKWorm -- anyone remember that?). I looked at how it
worked and realized that I was totally powerless to prevent the infection
as soon as I simply VIEWED the e-mail unless I radically changed the way I
worked.

I sat down and thought about why I really needed Windows as opposed to
something else and came to the conclusion that there was nothing I used that
wasn't available on other O/S'es. The same day I backed up my user data,
wiped the disk and installed Red Hat 6.0. Very quickly thereafter I updated
to RH 7.1, and a while later switched to Slackware, which I used until
earlier this year, when I switched to Ubuntu 9.10. Now running 10.04.

I'd have to be paid a lot of money to consent to work with any version of
Windows.

When I see the amount of trouble that friends of mine have while stuck with
Windows, I have the same kind of sentiment towards it. It's expensive,
restrictive and just too much trouble. With a clean install of Windows, you
need to get your credit card out and start purchasing software to protect
your system and just to get work done. With a fresh install of pretty much
any GNU/Linux distro, the machine is as secure as the user is aware of safe
hex and there's pretty much everything already there, or at least readily
available, to get work done.