True only to a point. The most secure system on Earth is useless if the user just downloads garbage willy-nilly without any effort taken to verify what it is he/she is downloading. The user is ALWAYS the weak link in the chain. Vista and Win7 throw up multiple messages telling the user "This program is trying to run, it needs admin permissions to do it--are you SURE you want it to do this?" The uninformed user just clicks "yes" to every prompt and screws up the system. No OS on the planet can save that system.
In short, the advice of Future Snake Eater is to be Future Snake Eater.
Yes, especially considering I don't have these issues. It's not like I became some kind of guru overnight. I learned about my tools, saw what worked, figured out what error messages were and how to solve them. It's cheaper that way, and far easier via prevention to keep your system running optimally while avoiding the pitfalls found by novices.
Perfectly true . . . which leads me to the next question, "How do I get a system which is relatively secure (which is all I can actually get) but which doesn't cry 'Wolf!' so much that I end up ignoring the warning which actually is important?"My solution to that is a Mac, running as a standard user to minimize my ability to shoot myself in the foot. And knowing that "antivirus" claims can be a scam malware vector, I ignore claims that I will blow up my system if I don't get antivirus software. I'm trusting the vendor of my system to take system responsibility. So far that hasn't been a bad bet.Your mileage may vary.