We use Macintosh computers (always bought used) at our house. They cost a little more, but we've never had a virus problem . . . ever. But we have had hard-drives die and that has created all kinds of problems. In the past we regularly backed-up our writing (books and columns), email and other data to dvd's and stored them in a safe-deposit box at our bank. It was time consuming, but it saved us loss of data a couple of times.
