Hi Walt, Winlink2000 does not have an HF sound card implementation. They are possibly working on it, but it has been 2 and 1/2 years since they stopped further development on SCAMP (Sound Card Amateur Messaging Protocol) when they discovered that it would not be possible to get it to work with weak signals.
I have reinstalled Vista Home Premium and installed numerous Linux variants and I would say that none of them are very difficult but Vista surprised me in that it was quite fast and easy to reinstall. The MS product is finessed a bit better and you generally don't have to worry about whether it will work with your soundcard/monitor/wireless ethernet/etc., but this is a continuing problem with Linux. As a long time MS Office user who changed to Open Office a couple years ago, I would have to say that MS Office is a slightly better product in terms of use. Particularly with compatibility since they wrote the design and made it difficult for others to reverse engineer the protocols. I use a lot of tables and so I am somewhat biased against OO which does not work as well with that one issue for me. But OO Writer does not have the horrific bug that I think was never fixed in MS Word that can trash your entire document. It does not occur very often, but can be a problem with very large hundred + page docs with complicated formatting. My understanding is that because of the difficulty maintaining the Windows programs and OS, they could never find the problem so it is likely still there. I used to make frequent backups because just making one little maneuver with multiple pages of tables in Word would trash the entire file:( But in the final analysis, when you compare free with $500 or so, I will go with OO:) 73, Rick, KV9U Walt DuBose wrote: >> >> Well Windows users have WinLink if they choose to use it. >> >> As far as Windows vs Linux, I just installed MS Vista Premium Home Edition >> and >> MS Office for Vista on my daughter-in-law's new computer and found it much >> harder than installing Ubuntu Linux and Open Office...I like Open Office >> much >> better than MS Office. >> >> Walt/K5YFW >> >>
