I should think that with all the crap that's online if you even have an internet connection, you need an anti virus program.

Not me. But don't do what I do. Unless you know what you're doing. :-)

Admittedly, I'm not typical. No one else uses my computer. And I'm reasonably computer savvy. I have Windows set to show me the file extensions, so I won't be fooled by those filename.jpg.exe type of spoofs. I don't use Outlook, which is, IMO, the single easiest way to avoid viruses. I use Firefox now, but even when I used IE, I never got hijacked or anything. My security settings were pretty high, and I don't generally visit risky sites. For a long time, I used Netscape 3 to web surf, because it has no Java and therefore automatically blocked popups and disabled those "no right click" scripts.

I do have a firewall installed; wouldn't be without one. And I run Ad-Aware and Spybot regularly. No antivirus software, though, and I've never needed it.

When Blaster hit, my entire office computer system when down, and so did many of my coworkers' home computers. But I had a firewall. So I ended up downloading the fix for them, and passing it out on floppy disks. (And no, I'm not a network admin or anything. But somehow, I always end up telling the actual network admins where to download patches, that Good Times isn't real virus, etc.)

Anyway, I've been using computers for almost 25 years, and online for over 10 years, and I've never gotten a virus. For me, antivirus programs are more trouble than they're worth. They eat up system resources. They give a lot of false positives. They cause glitches with a lot of other programs. And they don't do anything terribly useful, at least for me. YMMV. I would certainly have one if there were kids in the house, especially if they were bringing home disks from school. But for just me...they're like child-proof caps on a medicine bottle. Nothing but a pain.