An alternative to XP!

At last! I've been using this for a few months now, and am pleased to report it's all going quite well.

Ubuntu is a serious alternative operating system to Windows. It's a distribution of Linux designed to work on your Windows or Mac machine in place of (or in my case alongside) your usual operating system. Best of all, it's free (and means that you can gain back all those karma points lost by using evil Microsoft products) and easy to download, or you can even order copies on cd or dvd. It includes as standard loads of useful programs (Firefox, Open Office - a worthy replacement for and fully compatible with MS Office, Gimp - like Adobe Photoshop, but free, games, multimedia players), and anything you don't have (like Skype and Realplayer) you can easily download and install. It does involve a little getting used to, and you may have to look up how to do things you take for granted under Windows or MacOS on th'interweb, but at least the answers are there, as there is a large (and still growing) community online.

If things carry on the way they are, I'll be switching to Ubuntu full time very soon (although I need someone to convert the WordFast macros to OpenOffice format to allow me to work on translations in Linux)...