For what it's worth:

Many people find the Hosts file method useful for blocking advertising.
I do not, for at least three reasons:

1- you are dependent on the judgement of a third party, whose notion of
what does and does not constitute bothersome advertising may not be the
same as yours;
2- (unless you are willing to manually update the Hosts file yourself)
you will be seeing ads while you are waiting for updates to the Hosts
file to be issued; and
3- the web page will not be reformatted and you may see error messages
where ads used to be.

I have other reasons for not preferring the Hosts file method, that have
to do with Flash and other active content.

I personally prefer ad blocking software. This allows me to 'point and
shoot' at ads and have them added to the program's blacklist; it also
makes it easy to selectively block active content; and it can reformat
the page. Good ad blocking software also allows you to kill background
music, animated GIFs and other distractions.

There's nothing wrong with using a Hosts file to block advertising. I
just prefer a different method.

---
Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est

[In line]

See http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm for instructions for
installing the MSMVP Hosts file.
For all other Questions, Issues and Solutions - see: The HOSTS File FAQ:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hostsfaq.htm
For detailed Download and Extract Instructions - see: Download Help:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts2.htm