A client of a previous consultant job owned a wild life rescue. One day she brought in her laptop that a Raccoon had used as a litter box (It was a Gateway, so not far off.) Rubber gloves, masks and moving to the companies attached garage with a card table was required to get the data off the HD and into the new one she purchased. The garage reeked of Raccoon musk for quite a while.

When I was the sole admin for a company I started using Spiceworks in it's beta. It's a free network manangment and help desk / ticketing system. Check it out...it's evolved into a very very power tool for small to medium sized businesses. http://www.spiceworks.com/

I was a Customer Product Advisor for them (I used the software, they banged ideas off me,) several years ago when it was in Beta. The current versions have evolved into a very very nice product. I no longer use them, because I work for an enterprise of 100000 machines. That's larger than SpiceWorks is designed to handle.

You just have to make the time and keep the workout efficient so it doesn't take 2 hours.

Every OS should be covered by AV and kept up to date with latest patches / versions etc. If an organization is caught with it's pants down because of poor Security practices or insufficient malware protection that is not any OS mfg's fault. All OS's "should," have protection and update policies. When they're not followed that is a poorly run IT organization, not a hidden cost of an OS.