I have 2 laptops. One's for emails, ET, web surfing, and music, the other is for trading. Period. The 2 computers are NOT networked in case one gets a virus. AVG and Microsoft Security Essentials protect both.
All that "blacklisting" software is quite bogus. The industry is full of bogus products. Dig a little and you will find that you can be hacked quite easily with all of them running sometimes... Windows was never designed to be run on a network. It's not designed for security, security is based on levels of access and whatnot. Unix was designed to be networked. Unix security is done more by areas of memory, it's much more secure and always will be... Windows is only secure when behind a whitelisting firewall. Programming one is a pain but it's the only way to achieve security with windows applications and very nearly all trading machines are running windows... while you are at it you can put your checking account url into the whitelist and do all your banking from your trading machine... I've had windows boxes running behind whitelisting firewalls for years, they never, ever, not once, ever, get hacked or get a virus... my broker has a pinhole firewall, if a hacker could get behind their firewall he would still find it impossible to get to my computer... somebody would have to hijack an internet router to fool my firewall and if they have that much power then they can probably just barge in and take my computer and get a court to arrest me for illegal disposal of electronic equipment or something... Get a Mac for surfing the internet. The screens are better, the touch pads are better, the whole experience is greatly enhanced compared to the typical windows junk box...