canasia.org

Be prepared for several very rude awakenings: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html Interesting. Friends don't let friends install Vista... Well said. I am campaigning installing Kubuntu . If you read all of the article, then you'll know that even if you don't use Vista, you'll still be paying the additional hardware costs incurred by the manufactures to implement the hardware encyption/decrption for DRMd content. Now that I've got a work-supplied laptop with XP and an ISP supplied wireless router (also free) I can finally remove Windows from my other PC. I installed FreeBSD a few years ago now and have gradually migrated everything I do from Windows to FreeBSD.  All I have to do now is replace the 35mm slide scanner with one supported by SANE and my personal computer usage will be totally MS free. I can use the works laptop for accessing the (windows + IE only) secure website with the call management data_base_.

Windows to FreeBSD   Solaris & HP-UX may also be available.

My Windows XP SP-2 ain't broke, so I am not going to 'fix' it.   It will soon be obsolete, no parts or new software ....

I see moving from any OS to another OS (free or payware) to be expensive in terms of additional hardware or demands on my personal free time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. My Windows XP SP-2 ain't broke, so I am not going to 'fix' it. Many, including me, said that about Win98 too.  But the day comes when you want or need a new bit hardware and the current OS isn't supported with drivers.  Or yet another glaringly huge security hole is found and there no longer supported patches for it. And, of course, as I started out by saying, the new hardware you will inevitably need will already have the MS DRM tax added next time you go to buy some.  Even non-vista/DRM enabled hardware is likely to come from a company making Vista/DRM hardware so it's very likely they will spread out the extra costs across their whole range.

If you run defrag on the Windows partition that you want to make smaller so that the rest of that space goes towards Linux, the installer will be able to do that (i.e. reduce the size) automatically during the installation.   Thought that was partition by partition. And not for non-MS ones. I don't understand what you mean. Monika.