First things first: I'm just outside Newmarket in a village called Wickhambrook (for the record I'm a very new subscriber to alug) I have just started a new job where, like Adam (nice web server by the way!), we can pretty much choose between W2k (spit) and something GNU. I installed Mandrake 7.2 ans then a raft of upgrades and it now works beautifully... I work out my desktop tasks as follows:- Browsing: Exclusively Mozilla (0.7 at present) except when Konqueror gets used by some legacy K application (like K-mail - anyone know how to stop this?) I don't find Moz too slow at all but it's lack of a Quicktime plug-in is a pain... Email: K-mail is good and getting even better (IMHO). Handles HTML when I want it too, gives me th power to add MIME headers to things when I have to send HTML and has a simple but effective filtering system. Usenet news: Got a bit clever with this (you can tell I'm still a Linux newbie) and setup Leafnode via crontab to collect my news at certain fixed times when the bandwidth is available and then Knode or Pan to read it. Office Apps: Star Office 5.2. Yes it's slow to start up (I'm sure that's 'cause I installed the lot - it's great having 90Gb of storage!!) but does the job. Try to use Gnome or K Office stuff if I can for speed. The other rather nice thing is that my box gets the usual worm/script virii in my mailbox and laughs at it, unlike some of my colleagues who are still suffering!! he he regards all Nico -- _________________________________________________________________________ Nico Morgan : (home) http://www.nicomorgan.com Clickstream Technologies PLC : nico@nicomorgan.com The Old Granary : (work) http://www.clickstream.net Westwick : nico.morgan@clickstream.net Cambridge CB4 5AR : ICQ: 103427004