Yup, that's just you. And possibly everyone in your address book. And possibly everybody that suffers a DDoS attack in which your system is a participant.
You are not the reason why AV software ISN'T needed. You are one of the reasons WHY it's needed. It's not your fault -- at least not unless you use computers for more than personal use and haven't had an opportunity to get acquainted with the facts. The emphasis on the marketing of such products is that YOU may lose YOUR data or have YOUR operating system wiped out and lose (at least temporarily) the use of YOUR computer. But there's a lot more going on than that. I've seen computers that have been singing along happily for many months that were running Trojans and bots and just whacking the heck out of other systems, with their owners / operators none the wiser. Poorly run ISPs contribute to this problem by not tracking down the trouble machines and notifiying their owners or discontinuing service to them.
The health of your system doesn't necessarily affect only you. It can affect those whose addresses appear almost anywhere on your system. It can affect people you don't even know.
And a backup every six months means that you don't mind losing the last six months' worth of data, right? To each his own. But, even if you don't mind losing six months' worth, think about this. The last backup you made might be bad (or contaminated with something that will reinfect your system when you restore your data. It happens.
And you did understand the bit about some viruses that, once established on your system, may be able to prevent AV software you try to install or use from online from detecting it, right?
Those of us who really need our data and our systems, and who don't want to be a problem to others who are in the same boat, build a system in isolation from the Internet with known non-infected OS and software components. Then we install AV software, use firewall, and take intelligent (we hope) precautions before installing anything else on those systems.
I do sympathise with you when you allude to the way an operating system can be crippled, at least partially, by AV software. The trick is to chose the right AV software for your system. That may require doing some research of online sites that report on efficacy of the software and some experimentation with products on your own machine(s). AV software (and firewall software, too) that works on one system will cause bad behaviors on another. That's especially true in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Why? Because that type of software installs pseudo-drivers that may interfere with other drivers on the system, and nothing will turn a system that runs drivers in kernel mode into a steaming pile of dog doo-doo quicker than a driver conflict or failure.
I'd like to see everyone really think about these issues. The computing public needs to become a bit more sophisticated if we are to ever start getting a handle on Internet security issues as a society. Using the Internet without AV protection and some kind of ingress-egress restriction on traffic is kind of like the (as yet unsolved) issue of driving under the influence of various mind/mood altering substances. You never know who you're going to hurt. Maybe yourself, maybe someone else, maybe both. Most of us can cause enough carnage even when sober on the road.
Bottom line, if you want to surf and e-mail unprotecte, you'd be better off on an OS with a lower silhouette that isn't so heavily targeted by malicious software -- like MacOS or BSD or Linux. At least then the odds would be in your favor, though you still wouldn't be home safe.
- prosaic