Stick it to the man! Down with Seattle!

I'm sick of Microsoft! I've never liked their paranoid security-hangups, which make it all but impossible to do things with their software that you can do with most freeware and shareware. Then again, I'm still using their operating system, aren't I?

[My defence] - well, it did come with the computer!

[My more annoyed defence] - there's a sticker on my computer that proudly says "Designed for Microsoft Windows." That is, even if I didn't want to use Microsoft, my computer apparently won't work as well with other operating systems!

[A follow-up] I actually *do* have Linux on my second hard drive. I just don't use it very much, again because the computer doesn't much like it. The distro, if you must know, is Suse, which I like a lot, even if it's not awfully easy to use.

A list of my favourite non-Microsoft software:

OpenOffice.org (a Microsoft Office clone; I'm involved [a little] in translating it to Irish)
Writely.com (an online word processor - never lose a document in a powercut again! Ahem, like I just did two hours ago!)
Google Spreadsheet ('nuff said)
Firefox (God, was I tired of "Internet Explorer")
Audacity - doesn't do a half bad job of recording information
Skype - great for calling friends in the US, Ireland, and GB for a very low price
Picasa - sorts all the pictures on your computer and lets you edit them (in a basic way, anyway). Since I'm still on Windows ME, I'm delighted to have the ability to run a slideshow now.