Quote Originally Posted by tulip View Post
openoffice only works if you are online, and there are alot of times when I'm not online and still need to work on projects.
I've used openoffice without a net connection lots of times. I think I know the product you're thinking of, but open office definitely works offline.

Quote Originally Posted by tulip View Post
Kat_h, got any advice for someone who really wants to go open source but just doesn't know where to begin?
Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and download a disk image and burn it to a cd, or just order the free cd. Boot off the CD and play around a bit. If you like it then partition a drive and install it and play around more. Leave XP on your other partition so you can go back when you need to.

I started using Ubuntu when I inherited a laptop with a dead harddrive. I didn't want to buy a new drive until I was sure everything else worked so I booted off the Ubuntu disk image to test it out. The disk image has Firefox, Openoffice, and a few other programs already installed so I was able to work and just save files to a USB key. I did that for about a month before I finally bought a hardrive.

I still have trouble getting my wireless to work with it, and I have a Tascam USB interface that won't work with it unless I hack the firmware, which is why I still have Mac and Windows systems. Every 6 months there's a major update to Ubuntu so I'm just waiting for them to include the last couple of drivers I need. Everything else was completely intuitive. If you want to install software you just click on add/remove then browse through the list of available software until you find what you want, click on it, and it will download and install itself. 90% of everything I've needed has been completely idiot proof, and the other 10% has been next to impossible.