It's the governments fault!

Well, at least it is for why we (as a society) use microsoft products. in our country, the majority of people work for the government, either directly, or as a 3rd party supplier. therefore, the government has set the standard. Now, if the standard was set to stuff like ascii files, that multiple programs could read, companies could pick and choose, decide what software to run. instead the standard is for Microsoft products.

because of this Microsoft has effectivly had a monopoly for the last decade in comercial software. Linux and other *nix's are slowly breaking that hold, but thanks to a government standard, we have to live with an unsecure operating system.

Don't get me wrong, I think the concept of windows, an easy to use OS for the masses is a good idea. but in reality, it is so full of security holes and sloppy programming I refuse to even have it on any of my personal machines.

for around half the cost of going to XP/2K, you can install linux. modern distros can be designed to even look just like windows, and you never need see the command line. but you'll be running a secure, open source computer. whats more, you don't need to upgrade to the newest hardware, Linux will run on a 386 if you want (got an old computer sitting in the closet? why not give it a try? if you have a fast enough connection, you can download linux from hundreds of places on the net for free. I reccomend SuSE (www.suse.org), but Redhat (www.redhat.com), and mandrake (www.mandrake.com) are also good choices. www.linux.org has local "Linux User Groups" listed to help you find local users who love to help newbies. www.linuxnewbie.org is filled with tons of help files.

Running linux is Free, it's secure, and best of all, it's fun. Break the chains of Redmond, Cast aside Gates, and follow the Penguin.