Keith (Southend) wrote:

Brian Wakem wrote:


You could install linux (no blue screens) and use a journalled filesystem
like ext3 (default on most installs) which will avoid those issues and
does not require defragging.



If I knew what I was doing better, I'd go along with you on this one.
Would all my Windows software work with it, Word, Excel etc and other
windows applications?


OpenOffice (free) will read/write word and excel files. It also works on
windows so you could try it on there first http://www.openoffice.org/

If you have any corrupted word docs, openoffice is actually capable of
recovering word documents that word itself cannot.

Word and Excel can actually be made to run on Linux, but I wouldn't bother.

My advice would be go to a newsagent and find a linux mag with a free copy
of Mandriva. WH Smith currently have a special mag for £10 which is all
about installing and using Mandriva, and Mandriva comes with the mag. You
can't miss it, it has a giant penguin on the front. It'll walk you though
dual booting too, so you can still use windows if you need to.



--
Brian Wakem
Email: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/b.wakem/myemail.png