fellow geeks - i've "switched"
 

I've really switched, and sorta switched too... a co-worker gave me an iMac, which I promptly tried to destroy by putting OS X on it before updating the firmware. Got that fixed finally, and now I've got Debian running on it fine.

So, I've switched hardware, but still running Linux. :)

AMD processor Linux OS, Mozilla or Linux Web browser, Open Office suite.

I tried to use an ibook for a few months and while functionally it was great ('m a UNIX sys admind more or less) it was just too damn slow.

Now I have an IBM P4 based T41 that is great and I run XP on it with Linux in VMware. It's FANTASTIC as I get the best of both worlds.

I am using a great deal of freeware software in general. The office uses MS Office 2003 so I have that AND MS gave me a free copy a while back as a promotional deal. I think a good thread addition would be to share what freeware programs you're using as we might not know about them. I'm looking for some calandar program to replace the exchange setup the wife and I use to share calendar info between computers and PDAs.

I use these:

Mozilla(FIrefox)
CDBurner XP PRo (Fantastic CD/DVD burning software that is free)
Putty(SSH client)
Open Office
Spybot
Fedora Core 2 (Linux OS)

I had a list somewhere....oh, yeah, here it is:

P4 Gentoo box
15" AlBook (Panther)
P2 BeOS box
P1 Coyote box (firewall)
P1 laptop running Mandrake
P1 laptop booting Plan9 (someday I'll figure it out, maybe today ;) )
P1 laptop from 1996, running Win95 (wife's old laptop that she uses for "Create-A-Card")

I have two IBM Thinkpads - an A30 and R40, both Pentium IIIs. The A30 is a juggernaut. The R40 not so much so.

I ran Knoppix Linux for a while, but only in demo mode - I couldn't get it to load onto the HD. So I bought SUSE Linux and it loaded with no problem. It now dual-boots with XP.

The R40 is low on ram (256), but I plan to upgrade it to 512, and also get a 7200 RPM hard drive for it. That should really speed things up on the XP side, which I still need for certain Windows-specific software.

If it weren't for everyone else's (not my own) reliance on Windows, I'd have nothing to do with Microsoft. Any form of Linux seems to be all a person needs for their regular non-game computing.

I also have an 8-year-old Mac Powerbook (Kanga), that refuses to die, though it runs OS 9 reluctantly. That machine is in store for a Mac version of Linux, which I'm currently investigating.

I don't like the fact that AMD CPUs don't have thermal overload protection like Intel CPUs do... A failed fan can toast a CPU pretty fast and the Intel CPU just shuts down and comes back up when you replace the $5 fan.

Mac G4 OS X Panther, 512 RAM at home. Works just fine. Stuck using a 486 at work. It sucks. Of course this place is so cheap they would probably have us using Commodores if they could make it work for them.

Whew!

For a minute there after reading your post title I thought this was going to be another "coming out" story. . .

1.6 Ghz G5 with 1.25GB Ram
I love these machines, I _love_ this OS, I'll never go back

First computer: Intel SDK80, assembled January 1977

First 'real' computer: Apple II (fifth preproduction prototype) May, 1977

First GUI computer: Mac 128, February 1984

On my desk now: G4 PowerBook 1.25GHz (Aluminum) for work, Dell P4 2.4GHz for gaming.

WHAAAAA I want a Powerbook!