@Matekwa: Ubuntu is cool, user friendly and all until the day you need to use multi-media. Now my knowledge of the OS may be a bit dated (the last Ubuntu install I used was 8.04) and some things might have improved. Due to some licensing thingamajigs, mp3, avi, aac, wmv and other media you can imagine of do not play by default on most linux distributions. If you are patient however, you can build these stacks but it is a very painful process (you keep getting dependency errors where a downloaded library needs you to download yet another library and the vicious cycle continues on and on ...)

On one hand, with Linux you don't have to worry about viruses and stuff ...on the other, you can't watch movies, listen to music without going through the complicated setups first ...

Part Solution: Partition your hard drive into two, on one install XP or Windows 7, on the other install Ubuntu, install GRUB loader and you can switch between the OSes as you wish while enjoying the best of what each have to offer. Good luck.

where can one get this programme? I can not see my self downloading 700 megabytes over the expensive safaricom network. I understand we have version 10 now. And what is the differance between linux, ubuntu, and macintosh?How good is version 10

indeed ua version is outdated.
I have ver 10 on my laptop and there is no media that i can not play, by default.
Yeah, linux is free, infact u r encouraged to spread it.
Linux is the generic name for operating systems that are based on an open source copy of UNIX. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution sponsored by Canonical Ltd. and has variants like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu etc
One good thing with linux is its simplicity.
Remember when u have to look for and install drivers for each and everything u plug into you computer? Well linux does that for you free of charge...from wireless networks and the rest, its plug and play.

Yes You Can.
Yes I DO. All you need is to update it regularly just like any other OS.
Because of the misconception that it is very complicated, and also cause people think that free things are bad and expensive (cheap is expensive)

@kyt. Never been up close and personal with a Mac. Out of my pocket's reach so I can not give you very reliable experience based advice on that platform.

To switch between OSes (Windows and Linux), you install the different copies on different hard-drive partitions (say C and D). Usually, install Windows first then Linux after (if you do it the other way Windows might overwrite the Linux bootloader). Most Linux distributions will come with Grub,a boot loader that detects other installed OSes, so when the computer is starting up, it gives you a list of all the Operating Systems on disk. All you do then is just choose. If your computer comes with a pre-installed OS (say Windows and only one drive C ,...common these days) you need the services of PartitionMagic (or equivalent). Create a new partition (say D from C) where you will install Linux

The other route is to install an emulator, like VMWare in Windows, then install another OS on top of the emulator (you can install Mac OS as well as Linux using this option, I have seen a laptop running Windows with Mac X on VMWare). When OSes are installed in VMWare, both are available without needing to restart the machine - the VMWare OS runs out of a window in the Windows OS)

There is a VMware for Mac, designed to get popular Windows-only apps to run on Mac, am not sure it can run Linux - you probably need to monkey around with it for it to work.

However VMWare costs money and because its emulation runs the installed OS a bit slower than native hardware.