Metropol

The Register today reports that an unpatched Windows PC connected to the internet with no firewall or virus protection "is likely to be infected within 4 minutes".

That chestnut's been around for a while. While fairly accurate, it refers to a PC running Windows XP RTM from 2001 (so without even SP1 applied) and the infection spoken of is usually a drone exploiting the unsecured Messenger Service to display advertising, which while annoying, isn't particularly sinister.

Disks of that type haven't been sold for 5/6 years now, so it hardly paints an accurate picture of the fate beholding an unpatched Windows PC running Vista or XP installed from a newer disk with a service pack added (even an SP1 disk is inherently more secure out of the box than RTM).