About a year ago after many, many daily scans and updates for malware problems in my WinXP machine I moved all my internet activity to Linux.  This crud was taking an hour a day of my time.  I did a fresh install of XP and all my graphics software.  I had a hard time with MS as they did not want to reactivate it claining I was puting it on multiple PC's.  That got my goat.  After finally convincing them that that one of my two legal copies was really on one PC they did activate it.  I run Carrara 5 pro, Vue 5, Poser6, Corel Pinter 9 and Xenodream on this PC.  It is not connected to the Internet so there are no updates, no virus software, and it runs about 30% faster and fewer blue screens.  But my ultimate goal is to move all my graphics to Linux...This is getting more and more possible with new tools.  One of these is CrossOver Pro from Code Weavers.  I got this last week and now I have Carrara 5 Pro working directly under Linux.  No luck with Poser6 so far, but I am working on that.  The purpose of my post is let you know there are alternatives to MS.