Open Source for your PC - Slowly advancing forward.

After using Apple Mac for years, I reluctantly bought a PC (S0ny VAIO NS VGN-NS25G) with windows vista on it! I was forced to because an accounting software that I planned to use (Tally) runs only on windows.

Not wanting to fork out more money for other Microsoft programs, I explored open source out there.

Here are the recommendations:

1. OpenOffice is quite an excellent replacement for Microsoft Office.
2. Mozilla's Thunderbird with Lightning and Google Contacts add-ons is a no-brainer replacement for Microsoft Outlook.

OpenOffice is getting major traction. Even some big banks in India have begun to use OpenOffice and it is real easy to download and set it up.

It is easy to configure Thunderbird to fetch e-mail from your e-mail provider. Using Google mail with IMAP was quite trivial. On the whole it took me about 3-4 hours to download and set up my laptop PC.

However, can my grandfather or father do this? Not likely. Can a non-computer professional set up their own PC with open source software? Not likely.

While all the great pieces of open source software exist and together can easily give Microsoft a run for their money, what is lacking is a comprehensive one click solution to install and set up all the various pieces of open source software into a complete workable solution on a PC running Windows.