[snej]

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"I figured the worst case scenario would be an infected Windows installation that required me to wipe the Windows drive clean."

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You're not thinking hard enough! The actual worst-case scenario is that the infected copy of Windows can be used by an attacker as a relay to connect to other machines on your LAN (including the Mac partition), either stealing confidential intranet data, or infecting more computers.
The second-worst scenario is that the infected Windows becomes part of a botnet and spends its time bulk-mailing spam, serving porn, or participating in distributed denial-of-service attacks against other sites.
Both of these are very common outcomes, unfortunately.

[wardoggie]

Just make sure you're not testing something that would violate a non-disclosure policy, since browsershots.org's "Privacy Policy" states:
"Everybody can see your screenshots, so there's no privacy at all."

[nyip11]

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The fact that people actually think they "need" this crap is the biggest marketing bamboozle every perpetrated on consumers. I'm happily computing on Tiger in tranquility without the OS warning me that I'm unprotected every 5 seconds. Priceless.

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hmurchison is right. Why people put up with this crap is beyond me. Just look at the blame-the-victim mentality. When you say your Windows machine has a virus, the first thing people (especially anti-virus vendors) say is why didn't you keep your anti-virus up to date, plus do a million other things to keep your PC "safe"? Like it's your fault for getting a virus. Well, why don't you build software that doesn't get infected just by sitting there? If we put the blame where it should belong - on the sw builders and not the victims, we'd start to get somewhere. It IS possible to build a secure OS. PC users just don't demand it.

[imalex]

It's really tiresome for the "average" user to keep on top of this kind of maintenance.
It's easy for people who are technically savvy to stay up to date with tech news and software updates. But this is not the average user, who basically just wants to surf the net, do email, perhaps catalogue photos, music and sometimes video, and occasionally work with a word processing document or a spreadsheet. Most people don't care about the technicalities, they just want to be able to do these basic things. This should be straightforward and worry-free. On the Mac, they more or less are.
On Windows, unless you do make a point of keeping up to date on virus and spyware protection, it's far too easy to be caught unawares. This is "work". When people only use their computer, particularly at home, for the most basic functions, they don't want it to be "work", as this is their spare time activity, for the most part.
We have a network at home that only includes my Mac and an old Pentium 3 PC. My roommate uses the PC for just the basic functions I described above, minus the photo and music collection part of it. She's not very technically savvy, so I do the maintenance on both our computers. Needless to say, the PC (beyond the fact it's an older machine) requires a lot more maintenance than the Mac, and I do a lot more with my Mac than she does with her PC. If I weren't there, her PC maintenance tasks would be at a bare minimum, if any at all, not only because she's not knowledgeable, but because she wouldn't (and feels she shouldn't have to) bother.
I use a computer most of each working day, and a good 20% of that time is spent resolving technical issues. When I get home and I go to check my email and peruse the news sites and do a bit of "leisure surfing", I don't want to deal with more technical issues. When it's time for PC maintenance, it's a real chore, and I do it, but I can well imagine most people not bothering, just because it IS such a chore.
In spite of the regular maintenance - backups, disk and registry cleanup, virus/spyware checking, etc., I received a notice from our ISP two days ago stating that "unauthorized probes" have been reported originating from our IP address and should be stopped/checked as this is in violation of the EUA. After doing a bit of investigation (they provided a list of times and some other technical data on the "probes") I was able to identify that they were not originating from the Mac, although I can't "positively" identify anything from the PC, either.
My roommate, not being the least bit technically knowledgeable, would not know the first thing about how to deal with this. If nothing is done, we could potentially lose our ISP subscription.
Sigh. Does the world really need Windows?
Anyway, I'm now looking for a good price on a used/refurbished Mac for my roommate.
A.

[jonheal]

I love my mac and I love the fact that I don't have to worry about it (for now, anyway), but I use a PC all day at work, and we have three Windows machines at home that are always running. Frankly, it's just not that big of a deal to keep them up-to-date. If you leave Automatic Updates on (or at least visit Windows Update periodically), your going to be protected, for all practical purposes, from known vulnerabilities. If you use a decent anti-virus package (I use MS OneCare), your covered on that end. AV packages update themselves, too. There is very little action required of the user.
I can't explain the author's infection other than he went somewhere he shouldn't have. Anyway, just because the malware was on his machine doesn't mean it was active. If he was current with Windows Update, he would have been protected anyway.

[d00d]

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If you leave Automatic Updates on (or at least visit Windows Update periodically), your going to be protected, for all practical purposes, from known vulnerabilities.

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Too bad there are so many zero day exploits.