On Friday, in a frenzy of energy and blind faith (and with the knowledge that installing Windows would eventually lead to a re-install and minor hair pulling on my part), I installed Linux. To be exact, I installed Ubuntu.

The install was quick and some of the issues that I had the first time I attempted Linux a few years back seemed to be gone: mouse worked right away, internet was loaded up and running almost instantly - so far so good. Sadly, it wasn't all happy-happy-joy-joy. For the rest of the weekend I fought with a terminal that I don't really know how to use and following nearly 30 different step-by-step instructions on how to fix my sound issue (which I still didn't manage to fix). And then there was the pesky problem of flash on websites which didn't always load; not a huge deal but a minor problem when you write about movies and so many of the trailers are embedded in various flash formats (the only one that seemed to work without a hitch was YouTube but it too was on the slow side).

After much cajoling, swearing and hair pulling, I finally gave up on the install last night and re-installed Windows. And let me tell you, that was no picnic. Windows is a lumpy, bloated OS which took over an hour to install (all those bloody service packs) but it works and that dear techfolk, is something you can't take away from it.

I'm hopeful that Windows 7 will be a little less heavy than XP but I'm not holding my breath. Until that is released and put to the test by honey, I'm sticking with the now nearly 10 year old system.

One thing is for sure, if it was available for Windows, I'd be running Galeon as my web browser. Shit that thing is FAST!