OK, a buddy of mine has been dealing with a rogueware (One of those classic kidnap your PC until you pay our outrageous license fee, then we will magically "repair" it by stopping our own program)  issues.  Twelve hours of Windows reinstalls, he still doesn't have his address book back, and until I stopped over, he was sans sound.

That's really crummy.  It takes  alot out of you when an appliance is kicking you down into the gutter.  You see, that's just it, these PC's are supposed to be an appliance, something so intrinsically simple, most folks can just use them, and use them easily.

So. I take my Live CD with me.  After the boot, with everything responding right from the CD, and running near Windows' installed speed, he started the questions.

There were questions I did not realize existed, so I wish to share some

Will my digital camera pictures all need reformatted?  Not likely, most cameras in today's world take jpg or jpeg pictures, and they are easily read by MS Windows or Linux.  jpg files are great for both formats.

Can I see my mp3s?  Yes, for the distro I shared with him.  It's an easy install if it's what he needs.

What about Flash Video from News and YouTube?  No issue, as long as the site is web compliant, it will be fine.

Imagine his surprise, when his "broken" PC started playing sound and showing him his youtube videos right off the CD!

What about email - he already used Thunderbird, same program.

What about Firefox, Will it run?  Yes, again.

OK, Say I bring a spreadsheet or a Word document home on this here memory stick.  Put it in, run it, open his doc file and it formats right up.  Then he informs me, it doesn't even do that in Word, seems the defaults in Word need reset, or the file doesn't post properly.  Yet, right up and correct in OpenOffice.

You see, I have felt for some time, that the field was level, or actually tilted slightly to Linux.  But I was actually being affirmed by an end user.  This guy's good, but he's really just an accomplished user.  All he wants it to do is work.

Then, the best moment - he looks at me sheepishly, and says "Do you think I can borrow your disk?"  Nope, I say, you can have it.  And when you are done, please share it with others.  Everything I have shown you is Free or Open Source Software.  The total bill for everything you saw, nada, nothing, the big zero, the price of the download, and the CD we burned it to.  Which, by the way, I paid for, so it truly was, for him, free.

Then he started having fun, show me that - what do you call it - Compiz desktop, and how do you switch the cube?  And how do you copy files, Oh, just like I already do?  What about naming, same way, cool.  Can you open these files?  They aren't opening in Windows.  Oh, those are some of my favorite shots of the grandchildren, I thought they were lost.

The last one was music to my ears.  Yeah, it was just a file association problem, but I did validate he was correct, before I fixed his Windows.

And I have to tell you, his Audiophile 192 sound card, well, it rocks!  All in all, an enjoyable evening.