Post-Dell sucess, plus a new Win 98!

[grant_p]

Well, I did finally get to clean off my friend's new Vista computer.  NOT fun.  Her Word 2007 wasn't saving in the right format to be legible to anyone else, I had no end of trouble finding the buried diologes that the new interface makes.  It kept asking me if it REALLY wanted to do that, and I had to get rid of Google Desktop Search, a TON of toolbars, and some sort of ad-blocking bar that wasn't even working.  I have no idea why Dell even included it.

On the bright side, it now works fine and I got her old Windows 98 computer!  After running Ad-Aware and Spybot and removing 750 different programs, I'm still not sure it's safe.  So...

1. Any idea as to which Linux might be ok to load it with?  It's an OLD Win-98, not SE by any stretch.  I could re-load it with 98, but I don't have any way to get security updates, so I'm thinking of loading Puppy Linux or the like and sticking it in the nursery at Church.

2. What is Microsoft Works for?  I've had it on every system I've ever had, and not only does it not save properly, it screws up the formatting of everything it touches.  I wiped it.  What is this thing actually doing?

[C-Chan]

*springs into action*  ^v^

Well, I did finally get to clean off my friend's new Vista computer. NOT fun. Her Word 2007 wasn't saving in the right format to be legible to anyone else, I had no end of trouble finding the buried diologes that the new interface makes.

That would be the dreaded new "docx" format, eh?  ^__^
Yeah, Office 2007 is designed almost exclusively for lock-in, and you really ahve to search high and low to find a way to open those wacky new formats outside of the suite.  ^^;

On the bright side, it now works fine and I got her old Windows 98 computer!

That reminds me of how I got my old Gateway computer that I refurbished.  I set two Macs up for my friend, got paid with a nice new old computer that made the perfect test bed for old systems.  ^____^

1. Any idea as to which Linux might be ok to load it with? It's an OLD Win-98, not SE by any stretch. I could re-load it with 98, but I don't have any way to get security updates, so I'm thinking of loading Puppy Linux or the like and sticking it in the nursery at Church.

That really depends on the make and model, year, ethernet port availability, and most importantly RAM as well as CD-ROM capabilities (e.g., can it boot from CD?) .  The Gateway I told you about only had 64megs of RAM, which was serviceable for things like Puppy, Elive and Linux Console, but it was only after I stuck in some cheap SDRAM (a 128meg stick for pennies on the dollar so to speak,.... hence a total of 192megs) that the doors of opportunity opened up for a ton of cool and smooth-operating distros.  ^__^
A 660Mhz Celeron processor w/ 192 megs of RAm was capable of running everything from Knoppix to PCLinuxOS, to DreamLinux to Ubuntu/Mint with hardly the kind of hiccups I expected from a system that could barely eek out with Windows ME.  ^^

SO yeah, if you can get back to me with that info I think we can come up with a good strategy on what to do.  ^__^

Otherwise, I'll recommend Puppy, Elive, DreamLinux, SAM Linux and Damn Small Linux, and only because they're fast and at the same time reasonably-well supported.  ^__^
Puppy is fine and cute, but you may be interested in the Elive/Dream/SAM combo only because they're more mainstream distros, and hence have ways of providing contemporary software much more easily.  ^v^

2. What is Microsoft Works for? I've had it on every system I've ever had, and not only does it not save properly, it screws up the formatting of everything it touches. I wiped it. What is this thing actually doing?

Microsoft Works used to be the old de facto Microsoft Office Suite, but slowly and surely got demoted to simply "Microsoft Office Lite" over the years.  Now its just used as bait and switch, to get people used to some kind of M$ production suite, all the while keeping it crappy enough so that you'll eventually beg to get something better (or NEED something better, in case your work or school has Word, and you REALLY need to open Doc files at home... ^.^).

Pure and simple lock-in, but with OpenOffice you can break free from that viscious cycle.  ^__^
(incidentally, I hear it also includes a plugin that can open wps files.  ^.^)