No, it's not a Nigerian scam.........

Have you ever thought about giving Linux a try instead of Windows? Pundits claim Linux isn't ready for prime time. I'm going to give it a try over the next few months and report how it goes. I've chosen the Ubuntu distribution for a few reasons. It's free; they'll mail it to you on CD-ROM if you ask; it's dummied down to the point where anyone could use it; and they make it easier to find and trust add-on applications from the internet. In my mind, if all you use your PC for is e-mail, chat, web browsing and composing documents - you don't need no stinking Windows.

On the advice of a good friend, I took the Ubuntu Live CD out and booted my laptop from it instead of Windows (no install - just a live demo). Keep in mind, loading an operating system from a CD is inherently slow. After answering a few basic questions, I was looking at an Ubuntu desktop in under 4 minutes. I opened the menu, found Firefox, opened it and tried to surf the web. No go. I was intuitively able to find the network settings in the menu and simply enable the network connection. Click, click, done. I'm surfing the net using a new OS in 5 minutes. Windows is sound asleep on my hard drive, unaware that an interloper has complete control over my computer.

So now that I know it works with my hardware (wireless network card as yet untested), it's time to install Ubuntu in a dual-boot setup, keeping Windows in case I need it.