KDE is looking much better than 3 years ago. Still a bit more to go.
I still think that a system should be choosen by enviornment. I love my Mac but it's still not good enough for all enviornments and uses (getting close though
)
I do lots of light weight work -- simple-simple graphic design, web browsing, word processing, most of which has been recently for my site. (which is now a concern -- got a dead box from a friend and gonna try to get w95 running on it again to check my site.)
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If I were into games like I used to be then obviously M$ still has a major advantage. Release date wise.
If I needed a server. Then a regular cheap-o-la box with freeBSD would be the choice.
If I were in an office enviornment that needed to transfer lots of data with other offices (especially non-internal) I'd go M$. M$ is like the plague and is just simply every where -- can't go solo in that type of situation.
If I were a heavy duty designer/print person ... errr ... is there an alternative ??? Mac for sure.
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hmmm ... I agree the next year or 2 will really be a good year for end users since hardware has slowly crept on to everybody's desk which means users will start to choose a computer on the merits of usage and easy of use instead of the remembering 4 blue guys skipping and shaking in a commercial -- cool comercial though
-- or choose their new computer cuz sales folks say this is the best seller in their store.
openoffice + gimp + sketch ... 
