Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:24:58 +0000, Colin B. wrote:

That would be me. :-)

And me, for much the same reasons. But explaining that to a non-techie is
a lost cause. With a great deal of persuasion you might get them to use
Thunderbird.

There are applications that don't run under anything but Windows so I have
it on my machine. But most of the time, and all the time I'm online, I
use Linux. When I get the time I'm going to try WINE (Windows emulator)
and see if the apps I use will run under it.


Try vmware server on linux. Any windows apps you need will run with no
problems. You can install windows and any windows apps that you might
need. When your windows virtual machine gets hacked, just delete and
reinstall. Your linux machine will be the none the worse for wear.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

I have it on my linux box running win2K, winXP and Solaris 10, all at
the same time and with no performance issues. Memory is your friend -
on a desktop with 2.5GB, I still don't have any paging issues.

Fortunately, the only windows apps I need are things like Taxcut and
cutlist. So far, my virtual windows machines haven't been hacked,
probably because of infrequent use and a good linux based
firewall/nat/dns/dhcp linksys wireless router running the dd-wrt linux
based firmware as well as the full suite of AVG protection tools.