Herewith the gist of an email rec'd from Peter Carruthers with an invite to join a webimar on the above subject and can be useful to many of us.

"A picture is worth 1000 words. If that's the case, how much is a video worth?

During the Christmas holidays I managed to wipe out my Windows PC. Faced with the option of installing Windows (again) or installing Linux I chose to install both to compare them. Below is a discussion on the subject, as well as an invitation to join me at a live webinar next Tuesday to show you how close Linux is to Windows, and how much 'Linux' software runs under Windows. The major difference? Linux costs nothing. Windows costs a heck of a lot more.

But that difference has some implications. Firstly, the Linux guys are not going to threaten you or prosecute you if you copy the software. Actually, they want you to. Secondly, Linux uses a lot less machine than Windows does, and that means it's far easier upgrade an old PC. It seems that each time Windows has a new release, that release needs a bigger machine. Windows, in a word, is not green!

Each time I broach this subject a few purists point out that the two are not identical, or even completely compatible. They are right.

That's why I am running a webinar to show you how they stack up against each other. (You probably already know what Windows looks like, so it's mainly to show you how much it looks like Linux, and how it can do anything you're using Windows for.)

Most of us don't use most of our PCs. Your own PC – no matter how old it is – is almost infinitely more powerful than the biggest mainframe I worked on before 1985, which occupied a very large room and had water based plumbing to keep it cool. It is thousands of times more powerful than the equipment that took Apollo 11 to the moon. And hundreds of times more powerful than my first laptop, all 13 KG of it!

Yet, most of us use our PCs for a few very simple functions:

Connect to the Internet via a browser;
E-Mail;
Word Processing (and most of us only use it as a typewriter, rather than all the advanced features);
Spreadsheets;
Presentations;
Accounting;
And possibly one or two specialist Windows applications. (Voice recognition is one of my specialist apps.)
Most of us, embedded as we are in Windows, have one or two Windows applications that we cannot live without. We think that this means that we cannot change to another operating system. Not true, because there are two ways to run Windows applications inside Linux.

Join me on Tuesday evening to check it out.

Whether you are the only person in your company, or you have dozens of PCs in your firm, this hour is going to save you a fortune, as well as expand your options dramatically. Did I mention it's gratis?

Register Here.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/registe...gn=PetesWeekly

(We will record it for folk who can't be there.)

We will confirm your registration by e-mail. A few hours before we start at 8 PM South African time on Tuesday next week (January 18) we will e-mail a reminder. Click on the link in the e-mail 15 min before we start submit you can download the snippet of software your machine will need to see our PCs and hear us. You will need any version of Windows, or Apple. (If you are using Linux, install Windows inside Virtualbox, and connect from there.)

If you have never seen a webinar before, relax. Your PC will simply relay our voices, while showing you exactly what's happening on our PC desktops. If you have any questions, you can text them to us as we speak, or – if you have a decent microphone – you can put your hand up and ask them live.

We have space for 500 people. If you are planning on buying just one PC or any software this year – this webinar is going to save you at least the price of that unit. (Without you buying anything from us or anybody else. Free means gratis!)

Finally, if you can think of someone else who might want to see how easy it is to use Linux – please forward this e-mail to them. They will thank you, and so will I."