Something I kinda have wanted to get off my chest for a while: No, shitty anti-viruses (read: Norton, McAffee, etc.) aren't better than nothing. I roll without out an active antivirus most of the time (at least I did, and will again when my MBAM premium runs out) and visit rather shady sites regularly, yet I have not had an infection in years. Bloated security software does more harm to the computer by wasting system resources and blocking other removal tools; Windows Defender with MBAM free is more than sufficient for 99% of users, if even those. My Grandfather's computer was completely overloaded with rogues and a few rootkits with Norton running to the point my father just bought him a new one for Christmas. We then took the old one and nuked it from orbit because it was just so infected. To keep clean: Get a good adBlocker (I recommend uBlock Origin for Chrome/Firefox/Pale Moon), disable running scripts and plug-ins by default, and don't download something you didn't intend to. For piracy, don't run .exe files unless your going for software. For software keep it to fairly trusted torrent/download sites, preferably ones with a good community (since good communities will report and clean up bad downloads) and go for the best seeded torrents since people tend not to seed malware. On the plus side, I finally got my father to come around to not shitting up every computer with Norton; I managed to convince him to use Windows Defender on my Grandfather's new computer and the old one we ended up giving to my step-mother's side of the family, which is a start.
Agreed, although for less technically inclined folks, moving to Linux would be easier. Seriously, drop Lubuntu on their formerly XP machine, get them over the hump of using a new OS and web browser, and they'll have far fewer problems over time. Plus less technically inclined users tend have less holding them to Windows: My mother used Lubuntu for the last 3 years of her life since the only programs she used were solitaire and a web browser, but I can't move to Linux due to a lack of games, needing Windows for school, and potential hardware compatibility issues.
You know what rustles my jimmies? When people say there aren't any good games on Linux. ;)
Agreed, it is a lot better than it used to be and when I build my desktop it is very likely that I'll be dual-booting or running Ubuntu exclusively, at least for a while.