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Certainly it's possible (and easy with XP) to network your browsing computer to any of a number of other computers you have, but doing so introduces a risk of contamination even with firewalls enabled. I would never do it because then I'd want to install antivirus software on the networked computers (which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place).

Not everyone can benefit from using my type of setup (some may not have a spare computer). My reasoning for having my setup this way is to prevent contamination of my good computers which have lots of software and sensitive or fragile applications running on them by COMPLETELY ISOLATING them from the Internet, which for all practical purposes, is the only real source of viruses and such. That lets my cheapo computer take all the risk, and even if it does get loaded up with viruses, I don't care because there's not much on it to be affected anyway. I also find the performance hit that antivirus programs put on my computers to be unacceptable.

If you NEED to transfer files you've downloaded from the Internet to other computers, you'll need to isolate any suspect files on your hard drive and run an antivirus scan on them which doesn't need to be running all the time (only when you want to scan something). Keep in mind any antivirus program needs to be constantly updated and there is no guarantee that they'll catch everything even if they are. Then transfer clean files by burning them to a CD or DVD or by using a thumb drive or something similar via a USB port.

The other suggestions on this thread are mostly sound and I'd recommend one of those instead of my setup if you really aren't able to have a single browsing computer totally isolated.

I'll take all of these into account, but your suggestion is a very good one for my home setup. I'll keep my old computer handy just for web browsing, and keep all my sensitive files on my new one.

Of course, I would still have to use some kind of protection on the new one for those times when I am on the road and must use the web browser to access my work e-mail account.