> Also, all of that stuff is free (or has free alternatives), so I don't know where the author came up with the "couple of hundred bucks" figure. I only counte

> Also, all of that stuff is free (or has free alternatives), so I don't know where the author came up with the "couple of hundred bucks" figure. I only counted Photoshop + MS Office. The reason for that is because I wrote this article as a response to the latest "Why Linux is not ready for desktop" article I came across (you'll find the link to it in the first paragraph of my article). They have mentioned these programs as Windows advantages, not mentioning their disadvantages at all. I agree with you, most of the regular users don't need them anymore. > You also get what many consider to be the best IDE available. For free. Yay! I also consider it to be the best IDE there is, but since I'm not using most of its features (I'm just building some simple Visual Basic apps as a part of my college curriculum), 20 GB is kind of a lot for me.