Your totally right spank, but in the answer lies the problem you must know a decent amount about software and pc's in general, to surf a little. A lot of people at my work don't have that and manage to screw up their comp in a few months time. In my country most older people can't understand technical english, but they all have broadband internet acces( where like you said lies the problem most of the times). I think people should educate themselves more and see the dangers of internet( for their pc's that is...).
Another good anti-spyware program is Spybot search and destroy, it's donation-ware( yeah really
) so it's free and it's capable of deleting a lot of crap from your regedit.