As long as you have good anti-virus, good anti-spyware and a good firewall (not the Windows chocolate one), then you have indeed saved yourself a lot of hassle.
The only thing Windows "updates" have done for me is first, to fill the hard drive with shedloads of blue-underlined folders whose purpose I wot not of, and second, to cause the machine to freeze periodically while demanding to talk to its mum back in Redmond.
I have now set my Firewall to block absolutely the "Windows Genuine Advantage" from connecting to anything, in my network or on the Internet. It's been a lot better since.