the right to privacy and protection from criminal damage are important rights too.
Agreed. However it is apparent to me that even with a paranoid level of security, windows is still not secure enough. Most people don't even use a firewall, and though XP does contain a firewall it is generally switched off at install.
Cleaning out PCs is a time consuming and specialist task.... I have done several without asking for payment, quite frankly given the time required and the level of competence needed it would not be economically viable for most people. There is clearly a huge market out there.
I suspect that we shall see a growing exodus to Linux based systems in the next couple of years, which is no bad thing.... I am not an anti-corporate Microsoft basher but I suspect that many of the problems arise from their refusal to make the Windows API open knowledge; though having a shell as easily hijacked as IE dosn't help.