A good point, willby. I was a little surprised at the tone of Gertrude's original question, dripping with condescension as it was for unskilled computer users. My main point would be that in the rush to sell a computer to every human being, there is the implicit suggestion that any fool can use one. And indeed they can with a bit of education, but protecting said computer against the myriad of nasties is considerably more challenging.
As I explained in my WebRebates thread on this forum, I have an anti-virus system which updates automatically every day, a firewall correctly installed and configured, I run Spybot and AdAware at least once a week each, and I never EVER run a download from a doubtful source. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert, but after 13 years of computer use I am at least a few rungs up the ladder from a complete novice, yet I have somehow attracted one of these blighters.
Gertrude, your simplistic "Just Say No" approach is rather unfair I think. As BlueSkyThinker said in the first reply to your post, most of this stuff doesn't come labelled SPYWARE!!!!!!! DOWNLOAD NOW!!!!
I don't want to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist, but it doesn't surprise me that somebody from Windows says it will be another seven years before they secure their operating system completely. There's time for at least two new all new releases in that time frame, and where would Mr Gates get his next dollar if he released an OS with no problems? I suspect the seven years time frame may prove to be a little conservative!