Linux -- or one of the other flavors of Unix -- is a good system, although if you've only ever been used to Windows or Macs it might come as something of a shock to you. It doesn't "hold your hand" as much, so you really have to understand every step you're doing (those in here who get the Telecom Digest will no doubt have just seen the report of a little accident they had there with a "rm -r" command! [Linked Image] ). Of course, the upside is that the system is so much more powerful and a darn sight more efficient than Win-Doze.

If you don't want to go with a Mac or get into the "geeky" world of Unix, you'd be surprised what can still be achieved with good old MS-DOS from a few versions ago. OK, it's still Microsoft, but they weren't anything like now. I still use DOS 4 regularly (and even still have DOS 3.2 on one machine).

You can still run e-mail, and there are full-fledged graphical web browsers for DOS out there as well. Set-up is still rather more involved than just inserting a disk and following the prompts though.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-11-2005).]