I'm actually running it naked as experiment—as I did when I ran my Mac naked including no firewall for three years from 1984 to 1987—to see what will happen. It's sitting running in the background under VMWare Fusion on my iMac with it's own IP address. I have a backup file of the Virtual HD install... so that if it gets invaded by malware, there's no loss, and I can replace the install in two minutes. That's been running that way for over a month now... and so far, nothing.
Re: AVG... I used to have my clients' on AVG... but after they jumped the shark on their upgrade to AVG8 and added IE Tool Bars, Spyware and Adware to their repertoire, it got just too abusive of system resources. I'm moving my clients' over to Avast as the subscriptions expire.
Re: Copying from OSX. Windows7's copy of the OSX Dock (their replacement of the task bar) leaves a lot to be desired. Hovering over the icons to find out what they are is a delay that is productivity sapping. AeroPeek is a poor substitute for Quicklook on the Mac. I'm wondering how long it will be before Microsoft drops the transparency as Apple dropped it in OSX.2... too confusing. Right now several of my client offices have moved to Windows7 and the workers are complaining about the difficulty in even finding the URL entry window in Internet Explorer... they often enter the address they want in the BING window instead... because the URL tool and drag bar are soooooo transparent, they are hard to see.
I thought it was a bug-infested nightmare that required AV software? At least that's been a common theme in many threads here...
Windows7's copy of the OSX Dock
Well, the Windows Taskbar has been around since 1995, well before OSX. The Win7 functionality is what you had in WinXP, with the addition of the Aero Peek; all other functionality is essentially what existed for a decade or so (Windows XP).
Additionally, my understanding is that the OSX Dock is predominantly for quick launching applications (like on the original NeXT Step OS), where the Windows Taskbar is predominantly to show you what is running. Yes, the OSX Dock has a little blue glow for any given application that is running, but only for the application, not individual documents.
On the other hand, the Win7 Taskbar serves a different purpose: quickly locate what is running. It is well-defined; the center section is running applications only, the stuff on the right is status, and the left side is your menu and any pinned applications you choose to add (none, if you like). It simplifies the grouping (left to right): what you can run, what is running, what is the status of running processes/the system.
I'd say they are radically different in operation, not even close to each other. How that's a copy, I'm not sure...
AeroPeek is a poor substitute for Quicklook on the Mac
I personally like Aero Peek, it pops up in about 1 second on my machine, and then is instant as I move from group to group. But if you don't like it, it's simply right click on the Taskbar, select Properties then uncheck "Use Aero Peek", but I like it. When I have 4 or 5 open files I can use Aero Peek to hover over the group on the Taskbar and then easily select the document I want. VERY handy for popping between PDFs or open drawings.
And that is a big difference from Quicklook; I thought Quicklook was only for files, not running applications. So you can take a quick preview of files before you open them. Note that Windows XP - back in 2003 - introduced the file preview which does the same thing as Quicklook (and which was introduced in 2007).
I use the preview a lot, it previews even my Alibre 3D CAD file drawings and JPGs (something Quicklook doesn't do), making it easy to quickly scan through dozens of files and find exactly what I want.
workers are complaining about the difficulty in even finding the URL entry window in Internet Explorer
I agree about IE8; it's why I run Firefox. Of course, even Firefox and Safari start with the focus not on the URL field but the first field in your web page, so that you have to manually shift focus to the URL field. So errors with entering addresses in the page are more a result of the operation of browsers, I think, than strictly UI.
But you can install and run any browser you like; you're not stuck with IE8 if you don't like it. Why don't you have your clients use a different browser?
Hovering over the icons to find out what they are is a delay that is productivity sapping.
Right-click on the taskbar. Select properties. Change the drop-down "Taskbar buttons" to be "Combine when taskbar is full". Click Apply.
Now you have icons with big, descriptive names next to them, and unless you're running more than 7-10 tasks (depending upon resolution), each is individually displayed, not grouped (which the OSX Dock cannot do).
Now your clients don't have to lose their productivity; you can set up their machines better. I won't even bill you for that one...;)