You don't need all of those updates and patches from Microsoft if you're just going to be playing games and emulators. A vast majority of the updates are security fixes for net surfers. Once MS makes it impossible for people with pirated copies to update, pirates will warez out the cracked updates (just like they did with the SP2 beta).

So just get a mac and surf the net with that and use your PC for games and emulators... Then you have nothing to worry about.