It's not required, but many brokerages have trading software you can download that is far better than using a browser.

I open them, when I want to let some fresh air in.

gargamel

Great! Personally I keep my windows closed at all times and the curtains shut :P

No, seriously. My university use proprietary software, and they can't be used in wine. I've had a dialog with the university for some time now, but thats a big administrative (corrupt? :P) system. They don't listen, and don't want to listen. One should believe that a Government controlled educational system would want open, independent and transparent systems (free software basically)..

I use Windows - on my house, on my car...

Oh, you mean Micro$soft Window$? Not on MY computers. My oldest box is still setup to dual boot Slackware and Win2K but I almost never boot into Win. At work I have no choice because XP and Office are what's used in the classes and labs.

I frequently have friends bring me their spyware-riddled machines to fix. Does that count?

I need to use it at work. They have firefox and migrated to OpenOffice but the internal systems are basically IE centric. You can figure how much we bug the support guys =]

Rumours are spreading about some full Linux or BSD adoption, but some of us (co-workers) are trained to keep the control when the hardware cartel, with some software vendors, came and propose financial compensations to maintain the doors closed... and the bureaucratic people signs the papers with joy. disgusting...

I use XP for viewing episodes of NBC TV shows and TurboTax (application not online).

For remotely logging into windows machines at work. And for accounting software. And for those early 90's games, sometimes I bring out my dos disk.

I use windows to develop .net app with SharpDevelop, to play same games and to make my girl less noisy :P
I write ad-hoc software for hotel, restaurant and so on, so i always require a linux box with a MySQL server and I always use Slackware.
In the past i made some of this software for linux, but this wasn't a good idea for my pocket. In slackware my customers can't install malware, get virus and mess up he whole system so they don't call me to fix their pc. So now i develop client sw for win and server side sw for linux.

You'll love this:
http://www.dosbox.com/
It works under Linux.

Gaming Platform, mainly.

Also, for variation of my OS. Typically Linux.

The games are quite Intense, and Windows is more compatible.
But, I tend to run Linux.

Passed on Vista. Most likely will get Windows 7 Basic.

Vista = Gamming and Media.
Slack = Virtually everything else.

I don't see myself using Windows at all once Win7 takes over, I want to build my file server using Slack, and then have a netbook running Ubuntu which will mount all of my files at home via NFS, I'll use ssh when I'm on the go. Warcraft III is getting boring... The Gundam RTS mod for Spring will most likely serve my RTS addiction. Urban Terror and QuakeLive fulfill my FPS addiction. I'll either use Wine or virtualize a ReactOS box for Starcraft II when it launches (if that doesn't work, then fuck Blizzard, I won't play their games).

As an aside... Oblivion runs great under Wine FTW. Still haven't finished that time vampire of a game.

windoze????

at work, because it's a large company and all of their SW is windows based. at home 4 machines are windows, 1 is a macbook and mine is a dual boot slackware and w2k. i use the w2k mostly for software that i use for calculating radio system coverage maps. my schematic and sim software (LTSpice) runs just fine under Wine.

why all the computers? i'm married with 5 kids and with all the gadgets the kids have, they need computers to keep music/ videos/ etc and play dvd's. my w2k portion of my machine has a crashed copy of IE, so i use firefox almost exclusively. i would wipe a few of the XP machines if i could and put slackware on them as well, but it does seem to tale a bit more of a techie mentality to operate linux effectively....

thezoid --

Can you explain how the DELL Precision M4400's BIOS depends on Windows ?

Thanks.

-- kjh( first we suffered thru WinModems, then WinWireless now WinBIOS ??? )

I have a couple apps now, Garmin stuff that won't run under wine. I don't use them much as I can get an older version of mapsource to run under wine to do most of what I need, its the newer mapsource and basecamp that won't work under wine. I'm downloading and playing with various linux software now to see if i can find somehting that will work in its place. What I'm looking for is somehting to manage .gpx files, would be nice to have a korganaize/kphotoalbum type of app that could scan a folder full of all my gpx logs and do some simple analysis of them. I think if I ever get time I'm going to try and put together a gpx tookbox with a few scripts and ideas I've been playing with. Simple things to start like an import filter for openoffice and koffice that can read the gpx into a spreadsheet then a couple macros to calculate the total distance, time to travel it, miles per hour, draw the elevation profile in a chart, etc. Then make maybe a plugin for korgaizer to display logs on the calendar, then maybe a plugin for kphotoalbum to do the geotagging, etc.

Hi,

Clients!

Some people still feel the need for M$ Windows. Therefore I need to run M$ to support these clients.