"If you pass along an infected e-mail you are spreading a virus that could have stopped with you."

If you pass a long an infected email by forwarding an attachment that you didn't even open at all (the assumption here is that you are running a free operating system and Windows virri can't really do any damage), then you are not only spreading a virus that could have stopped with you. You are being stupid and unnecessarily annoying, and you deserve to be blacklisted.

If an MTA passes along an infected email, then clamav and other filtering programs exist. It's probably a good idea to install one.

(setq pattern (or (read-string "in files [all]: ") "*"))
(setq pattern (if (equal pattern "") "*" pattern))

Using (setq ...) for local bindings is un-Lispy, and you don't really have to use (if ...) for conditional assigment, because `read-string' supports a default value:

(let ((search-pattern (read-string "Search files [all]:" T "*")))
(forms-for-searching search-pattern))

What you have there is very similar to the built-in `lgrep', `rgrep', `find-grep' and `find-grep-dired' commands. Have a look in their help. They may be useful [I like find-grep-dired a *lot* :)].

Ironically, I installed Ubuntu, and found that most apps there used the windows keys (I know this must be an editable setting, but I haven't looked yet). So, as a hardcore Emacs user I'm actually much more comfortable on Windows than Ubuntu!

For most GTK+ apps (which is probably the majority in the default install of Ubuntu), you can get Emacs keybindings by adding the following line to your ~/.gtkrc-2.0:

gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"

This used to be the default in GTK+ 1.x, but then the GTK+/GNOME people decided to change this as part of the quest to make GNOME more "user-friendly". Ironically, the users they strive to befriend are Windows users rather than long-time Unix / GNU users...