Blu3duk said:
aprogram that you might wanna check into is Corel Wordperfect, ver 11 can be had on the net [CD included] for $14.00 and the whole suite can be had for a whopping $25.00
If all else fails you, then i suggest installing Linux 9.x and using the window lookingside of it, it will install on any compute that is a 486 or newer and work wonderfully..... and it is a free download, CD's cost a little. andit installs in a short time, not the 2 hours that good ole windows does, and its security is so much greater as not many virii are directed towards it.
Just a thought or three.
William
The word processor is good idea and Corel is good one although as you mention not free. He posted down on computer forum also and its headed in word processor direction down there. If computer has enough memory, say around 256k then Open Office is free and good choice. On older computers I gave him a link to several free small word processing programs for windows. He'll just have to sort out which if any meet his needs.
As to linux, he is looking for a quick solution and linux is more of a long term thing with a learning curve involved.
By "Linux 9.x" I assume you mean Mandrake although I think 10.x is out now isnt it?. (I actually liked the 8.x series the best) It will include linux version of Open Office and Kword. The thing about Mandrake is it is large and you really want at least a 2gb hardrive or hardrive partition to install it and at least 64mb ram and 300mhz processor to run it. He may or may not have those sort of minimums. There are tricks around that by using less resource hungry desktops, etc but then that is more to get used to. Also its faily straight forward to use but there is a learning curve with any linux, if you are used to windows only. And you have to usually have a hardware modem although some software modem drivers are available for linux. Most computers that came with win95 and newer came with software modems (winmodems). Hardware modems can be had pretty cheap on ebay though.
Anybody wanting to try linux first time, I always suggest Knoppix which can run from cdrom and ram memory without installing anything. Remove cd and shut down computer and not a trace of it left. Knoppix is just simply a beautiful creation that shows linux in best light as a desktop system. There are minimum requirements there, especially if you want to use larger programs like Open Office. However playing with it, I got it to run on minimum of a 75mhz pentium with like 40mb ram. Had to use cheat code for alternate desktop, and could only get it to surf with Konqueror browser. It was slow, but then again never intended to run on such an old system. There is always DamnSmallLinux which also can run off cd. It takes bit more linux knowledge, but in contrast to Knoppix, it runs very well on older computers. I'd suggest at least an early pentium, but guess some have it running on minimal 486's. Nice thing is its pretty modern and graphical interface. Go to
www.damnsmalllinux.org Look around the website and the forums. Only like a 50mb download which is still doable on a slow dialup connectionl.
Linux is more secure than windows and firewalls are available, but big reason it has less problems is that all spyware and virii out there are mainly written to affect windows. They are in other words windows programs although of a dark nature. They just cant run on non windows operating systems and non windows file systems. I for example purposely like to surf using BeOS just because first its small, simple, boots very fast, good graphical interface, and it has its own file system, making it immune to windows adware/virii, and also should any be written, Linux virii too. Neither windows nor linux can see Beos file system, although Beos can see fat32 and native linux systems. Since Beos is used by so few people, if somebody actually wrote a harmful program to affect it, very unlikely it would spread effectively.l
