[Andreas]

Nice article, but I have to strongly disagree on one point: Firewalls.

First of all, a friewall can never-ever consist of a single product - be it Soft- or Hardware.
Furthermore, a "Firewall" on the system that should be protected doesn't make sense at all.
All those personal "firewall" software available is kinda risky, as it gives the user a false feeling of being save - which isn't and won't be the case. In fact, thos PFWs can be highly dangerous when it comes to remote managemant functions - they can open backdoors to your system that won't even exist if there was no such program.
As we all know, only closed ports are good ports. So if you don't have open ports there's no need for a "firewall" to block those
So the only case in which personal firewalls might be useful is to stop programs from "calling home", but even this doesn't work well.
Last point: Zone Alarm is the worst software of this type. If one really want's to use such software you'd better go with Tiny/Kerio Personal Firewall.

I don't use a personal firewall and haven't had problems with digital crap (eg. worms, virusses, etc.) so far, although I am using Windows.