Don't necessarily be scared by Ubuntu. I migrated to it from XP and tho it took a while to get used to it, I found the the learning curve to be pretty gentle. No, it doesn't LOOK like Windoze, but a lot of it is pretty intuitive; one of the many excellent books on using Ubuntu to fall back on is a help. As long as you don't need to do anything really esoteric, it might fill your needs very well. AND you only have to learn it ONCE- not every six months when a new version is forced upon you as Microsoft does. Good Luck!