Even though this topic has been beaten to death, I know for a fact that many inexperienced users still don't care about the security of their computers and in the end we all suffer when their machines become zombies...

Jeff asks Passwords vs. Pass Phrases and to that I say - both. You see, even though pass phrases are way better than passwords, you still have one big problem - the more pass phrases/words you have, the harder it is to memorize them and on top of that if the pass phrases are very long (which they should be) it becomes really annoying entering them all the time.

The best solution I have adopted is to use a password manager like Password Agent (see related post for more info). The manager itself is protected with a pass phrase (a very long one) but all the other passwords are automatically generated nonsense - the right mix of uppercase, lowercase letters and numbers. It is fair to say that I don't know a single password I use ;) This way you get the best of both worlds.