There are free add on programs that will do the same for you as adobe and a pile of recording tools. Dell is now allowing the option of unbuntu on notebooks when they are purchased. But for me instead of upgrading a windows xp to vista ect I download unbutu and installed it. I have recording software on my home machine and just about every tool for photo enhancement you can imagine. the GIMP image editor is nearly a carbon copy of photoshop only with more tools .. its free also. Most all education facilites and government development offices all use Linux because it is far more secure

If you have an old machine around, I would suggest giving it a try. All the computer manufacturers have a deal with Microsoft hence we get windows all the time. For my home use however, I use Linux , I got sick of anti virus issues and spyware a long time ago. I can burn you a CD if you need one, the download takes quite a long time