After suffering a virus infestation in November 2002, I decided that I needed a higher level of security. I therefore bought another PC, so that the previous one could be devoted to this purpose. A friend installed SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional, with a firewall, and for all email and some web browsing, and to act as a gateway to the Internet. This is consistent with my long-time support for the Acorn platform. My changes demonstrate that we _can_ avoid the expense of buying from Intel and Microsoft, and give employment and intellectual encouragement to Europeans at the same time - truly a win-win situation ! I have since learnt that the AMD Athlon (which is faster than a Pentium of the same clock speed) is made in a $ 1.9 billion plant in Dresden, Germany.
My reasons were the same for the software. In myreading about computing, it became clear that Linux was emergingas a real alternative to Windows. This is particularly true ofthe SuSE distribution, which defaults to (but does not limit you to) the K Desktop Environment (KDE), which is very good, and still improving. For me it is important that both SuSE and KDE are European (actually German), whereas the Red Hat distribution and the GNOME GUI are largely American. I bought the SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional, with five CD-ROMs and a 450 page book, for about £ 55. This is very good value, considering that this includes the Operating System, with a choice of GUIs, facilities such as a firewall and Samba (for accessing Windows drives), and a vast number of applications, including Netscape Navigator and Open Office.org.