Having followed WINE development for many years, MS Office is one of the most difficult applications to get working (along with Adobe Photoshop) – so if you’re able to get those to work, you can probably get lighter apps to work too.

Generally OpenOffice does work really well (unless you try to use it with the custom hacked, I mean, tuned templates where I work – only the real MS Office can open those).

(Personally I try to write everything in plain text and if I need to pretty it up, I’ll do that in whatever and then PDF it.)

If you look here http://appdb.winehq.org/ you should be able to see if the apps you want to use will work.

LOL it is I who am always striving to write as well as you do, since you set the standards!!! The link you gave was very informative for sure.

Oh, the Netbook Remix is not necessary for what you have, it is really only an alternative, or perhaps for people who have purchased a netbook with Windows installed, they could use it if they wanted to try Linux instead. Xandros is a solid operating system (Canadian too!) and I know it works well on those machines – if it works, don’t change it

One thing you touched on that I don’t know if people really appreciate, so it bears repeating – those little Linux netbooks are very very quick to start up!

Also love the Ubuntu remix version but am not sure whether I need this on my netbook. Although I am tempted for sure. Right now I have whatever I need and think I’m doing OK as I don’t have extra clutter. I guess this remix thing would replace my XANDROS version? Am I correct in that assumption?

This is a very helpful post indeed and should definitely be useful to anyone looking at running a netbook who still needs some Windows apps.

You can also buy (for a reasonable price) a customized version of WINE called Crossover Linux that is really easy to use and does very well with this kind of thing (they pride themselves on MS Office compatibility, if a user needs that).

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

(They make a Mac product too, but I’m more familiar with the Linux version and have used it for years.)

Though not directly related to your post, you can find a netbook suitable version of Ubuntu Linux (the Netbook Remix) at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR if you wanted to try something different.

It is pretty much what Dell puts on their netbooks. I put it on my son’s laptop – it is an older machine – and it is very snappy considering the hardware. I guess I kind of made him a homemade netbook, even though it weighs almost 7 pounds!

Anyway, once again, thanks for a very informative piece!

-Brett