Hi all
I use Windows - at least I thought I did. I 'mess with' Debian Etch also - at least I thought I did. The two PCs sit side by side. Yesterday, it seems that at some stage, the Windows PC was used by others to play Sudoku, and check out something on eBay.

By contrast, the Linux PC had been used to load in 3 sets of digital camera images, and rework them (including a montage) and mail the results. There was also a Google Earth session open, measuring distances to farmland boundaries as consequence of a recent "foot-and-mouth" livestock disease outbreak in the UK that happened way too close. Synaptic has been busy. Konqueror has been used to purchase high-gain antenna kit. IceWeasel (yeah - both browsers up) is well tabbed up with Tom's Hardware Guide and Googlemail. A LabView industrial control application is being picked apart for bugs. The 'geda' circuit design software lurks there awaiting RTFM (as does more other stuff as yet unexplored), and there is a Blues/Soul/R&B disc in the CDROM drive.

If I were to move the print server task from the Windows PC to the Debian box, then logically, the Windows box no longer has much do do? Will it be an emotional risk point? Will I need a shrink to stave off a breakdown? Why is this so hard to do? Is a couple of decades of Microsoft dependency lock-in really so powerful?

There now. I've said it! I have arrived at "that moment". Enjoy my discomfort now, go on, smile!

This is why MS has been called a drug dealer.

The GUI revolution in computing--coupled with the prevailing marketing methods--has spawned several generations of people who really have no clue how to use a computer. My theory is that people would pick up Linux much more quickly if they had never used Windows or a Mac.

And schools---a "computer class" might mean just learning MSOffice.

Disclosure: I still have "Windows crutches" at the home and office. They are now used less than 1% of the typical week.

That is simply rationalization: we paid for it so it would be stupid not to use it (even if at some point the only thing you still use it for is to install the latest MS patches - that's been true here for several months now). From an objective point of view, it would make just as much (if not more) sense that it is stupid to hang on to it when it isn't needed anymore. I guess I've struck a balance between self-delusion and common sense by shrinking the windows partition on my "windows pc" to 20GB (use to be 250). Next time I'll shrink it all the way to the first sector. Next time.

You should also consider if there's any MS based SW stuff you use that you can't get a decent replacement for on Linux.
This also applies to proprietary data formats ie maybe you can't get at the data transparently.

Firstly for pixellany - you got me there. I hold up my hand to A, B, C, D , and E

Paying for it, is not restricted to the original software costs. In more significant lumps, it is fighting hangs, slowdowns, re-installs, countless reboots, deflecting unwanted advertising, keyloggers, spyware, trojans, and locking down/avoiding features that would leak my life to the world. I put so much "learning curve" getting used to the ways of some applications, I feel the same way anyone would when contemplating a MS divorce! I guess the more invested, the stronger is the feeling not to let go of it.

chrism01 is right about the apps that have no Linux counterpart. I do not just mean whether or not one can check out a u-tube video. The more seriously significant the computer application, the less important it seems is fonts, bells and whistles, look-and-feel, or even what OS it runs on.

In some fields, like airfoil design, I even suspect there is UNIX software that has no worthwhile Windows replacement. There are significantly powerful CAD suites in mechanical engineering and electronic/microwave design where some might have Linux versions, but are all so expensive that for me, the choice has been to achieve what I needed to do without the bells and whistles, often using open-source stuff modified. It leads me to question whether so much user time at computers is really useful "computing". Not so long ago, a computer more feeble than any modern Pentium/Athlon with a filestore way smaller than some discs found in modern laptops was enough for the entire USA tax system.

The Windows PC is not yet abandoned, but it had better be good for more than Sudoku/Freecell/eBay sessions, or it will soon become part of a dual-boot sandbox.

A point of no return... hmm. I don't know. Technically it would be when I found that I was only booting into Windows for a game -- and only that one game -- and kept having to reboot into *nix for everything else. When that happened, and I was tired of the game anyway, that was the point of no return.

I did not need Windows for my major (*nix was required and Windows was not) so I wiped out Windows entirely and never looked back. Eventually it becomes more of a hassle than it's worth. That is the point of no return.

I'll have to see how that Solaris system behaves