I dont use ANY MS products at home but I do at college and heres my advice:
1.)Get a *nix
2.)If you have win 98 and don't use DOS then you can delete autoexec.bat & config.sys and edit msdos.sys so your PC boots in well under a minute
3.)Run XP behind a firewall, don't trust the damned thing
4.)You seen those nice new pretty Macs, you could be even more extreem and get a Sun Blade for under a grand, even a RISC PC!!!