Leave of absence

[owl]

Our computer is broken. I was deleting some adware and I had to restart it into Safe mode, and after I restarted it back into noral mode Norton Antivirus wouldn't turn on Autoprotect and the internet wouldn't work. It dials up okay but it won't open any pages and after receiving a few bytes of data it won't send or receive anything more.

Does anyone have advice on new computers? What's the best make? Is XP a more crappy or less crappy OS than Millenium Edition? Is it worth £110 to upgrade with Office Basic Edition (Word, Outlook and Excel), or could you cope with Works 7.0 (ie does it have good spreadsheet and word processing programs)?

I won't be around much on LiveJournal or any sites, so if you don't see me that's why.

Comments

[wahlee-98.livejournal.com]

Windows ME SUX ROX. Seriously, it is teh horrible. XP may be annoying in some ways (like having to get permission from M$ to change hardware, and the default Fisher Price theme), but it is SO much more stable, seriously. Also, Service Pack 2 has a built-in firewall, and they just added a spyware utility.

I can't do a thing with Works, but it depends on what you need it for. I wouldn't use Outlook EVER at home (I use Thunderbird instead, which is far less vulnerable to viruses and has a built-in spam blocker and RSS feed support), but for any word processing other than just the basics, you probably need Word, and Excel is better than any spreadsheet Works will give you. Unless you want to be sneaky like me and use WordPerfect Office instead. :P

My new laptop is a Dell, and so is my work computer. I like them alot. Oh, and if you order from Dell, the WordPerfect Productivity pack comes standard with Dell systems. It includes WordPerfect, Quattro Pro (a spreadsheet), and Corel Address Book (which is pretty much worthless, but *shrugs*. WordPerfect can read Word files no problem and save them in Word format, too, and Quattro Pro is just as easy to use as Excel. So you get a full-function word processor and spreadsheet at a Works price.