Computer Gurus..........

[Gman]

You're in good company, Bert. The IRS has it's ass in a wringer because they didn't complete their upgrades in time. Who could blame them? They only had 4+ years notice of the end of support...

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...ors_picks=true

It's OK. The IRS has a Custom Support Agreement with Microsoft to continue to receive security patches. They used their position to get a hell of a discount compared to what corporate America pays. Can't say "No" to the IRS.



Avoid Vista. Microsoft will kill support for it as fast as they can since it was unpopular. You'll be good on Windows 7 until 1-14-2020.

I've been able to buy HP business model refurbs from Newegg in the past. Got a $1600 retail Elitebook for $600. Couldn't tell the system wasn't brand new. That was 6 years ago. I killed the HDD and swapped it with an SSD and it's still going...better than ever.

Something like this, maybe?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834257844

[cstone]

Meh, Ubuntu > Mint. Mint is great, and based on Ubuntu, but the complete removal of in-place release upgrade support is a killer for me. Stick with one of the flavors of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Etc if you want to go Linux (which I think is great!). Installing the proprietary drivers, codecs and softwares (read: Adobe) manually is much easier than a full manual upgrade from release to release that Mint makes you do. Ubuntu will do release upgrades in-place and easily.

Agreed, but Mint seems to be more user friendly for non-computer people IMO. I'm on cruchbang right now as I type this. I assume you completely customize your machines for specific uses and run your web servers in RAM only.

Bert, try one machine on Linux. If you like it I can move the others over for you. Its as complicated or simple as you want it to be. Do you have your data backed up? If not, pick a machine and I can back it up for you before installing whatever you want.

[BPTactical]

Is Linux something I can load without being a computer engineer?
Realistically I do e mails, Web surf, download product info and research , a bit of word processing is about it.
Not a gamer or video watcher.

[merl]

That you can do with linux just fine. Yes it is something you can load without much knowledge.

[TFOGGER]

Ubuntu's in place upgrades came back to bite me on my 4 year old laptop. something in the update broke the driver for the wifi card between versions. Still playing with ndiswrapper to see if I can fix it.

[sportbikeco]

Don't screw with Linux, you will be way out of your element.

I bought a Toshiba laptop at micro center for $300 for my girl at Christmas. I'd start shopping there or check slickdeals.com for a decent deal and read the comments so you know what you are getting.

You could build a decent simple PC desktop for a few hundred bucks that would smoke what you have now and last a lot longer then a laptop of the same price.

[cstone]

Is Linux something I can load without being a computer engineer?
Realistically I do e mails, Web surf, download product info and research , a bit of word processing is about it.
Not a gamer or video watcher.

Unless you are working on some cutting edge hardware or you need to do something that is really unique, Linux is a great OS for most users. For the most part you can set it and forget it. I check updates everyday, but I'm sort of anal that way. As different software maintainers get around to patching, rewriting, or upgrading packages and get those into the repositories, the updates are pretty routine. Linux will do everything you listed and it can do much more if you ever really wanted it to do that.

If you keep your data updated, you can run just about any OS, even WinXP. Just get used to wiping and reloading your hard drive periodically.

If you want to play with Linux, find out if your computer will boot up from a CD/DVD drive. Unless your computer is very old (more than five years old) it should. Pick a Linux distribution (distro). A good index of distros is http://distrowatch.com/ Most distros now have a live CD version which you can burn to a CD/DVD. Put the CD/DVD into the drive and power up the computer. Most distros will self configure for your hardware, but some will work better than others. There are plenty of users who have given up running their OS from a hard drive and only run it from the CD/DVD while keeping their data on an internal HD or USB drive.

If you would like, I could bring a couple of distros I already have on CD over and leave them for you to play with. They only cost me the price of a blank CD/DVD which is pennies. You are welcome to them.

[gos]

I'd buy a bare-bones dell for $329 and re-use your current monitor, that'll be easiest.

[dirtrulz]

Why are people freaking out over this. Just keep running what you have. Most of the updates you download from Microsoft are crap you dont need anyway. Its not like your computer is just going to stop working. Get a good antivirus, like you should regardless, and be happy you dont have to use windows 7. Its Y2K all over again.

[merl]

Why are people freaking out over this. Just keep running what you have. Most of the updates you download from Microsoft are crap you dont need anyway. Its not like your computer is just going to stop working. Get a good antivirus, like you should regardless, and be happy you dont have to use windows 7. Its Y2K all over again.

Hype
You are safe until the next exploit is found but then you are screwed. Good time to plan a migration