Great rant... I've been trying to get WindowsXP users to switch to Windows 7 for some time now... It is a GOOD OS... safe and secure... if a little quirky. But I agree with you. I would almost even feel pretty safe running it naked on the Internet like you can OSX.
Same here. In fact I got a friend to not buy a refurbished WinXP desktop. Instead he bought an HP laptop for $549 at Office Depot. It is a popular model since I see 141 reviews for it.
SPECS:
i3-370 CPU ..... the latest from Intel...... slick, very fast and lo power for longer battery life
4 gig memory
17.3" screen
Win7 -- 64 bit
6 cell battery
500 gig hard drive @7200RPM
How much is a 17.3" Apple laptop? I'm afraid to even look......$1600 is my guess....... Yikes!!!! $2300 for a 17" screen Macbook. The HP even has a slightly larger screen. So the Apple product costs 4x as much
Intel Core i5 4GB Memory 500GB hard drive1 ExpressCard/34 slot Built-in battery (8-9 hour)2 Intel HD Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 512MB Ships: Within 24hrs Free Shipping $2,299.00
Even on Win7, I still run anti-malware s/w, but Microsoft's freebie defaults (Security Essentials and Windows Defender) are sufficient, IMO, and they are very unobtrusive.
So although I agree with you that I probably would feed pretty safe running fully-patched Win7 naked on the internet, I wouldn't quite do it... The main difference is that there -are- active exploits in the wild for Windows, and not for OS-X. This is just me, and maybe it's just old habit. :)
I do run Win7 naked on a few machines used for testing, where anti-vir might affect developmental work, but I don't surf with those machines.