satsuma

If you are still undecided about going to church, then Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub might be worth a visit - the meetings are in the Lescar, so at the very least it will be warm and have decent beer on tap!

The simplest solution is just to go to http://mobile.live.com in your iPhone browser and sign in to your hotmail account from there.

You can also use the DSi for basic web browsing without needing the plug in cartridge and there are downloadable games available too. There's not a huge selection on there at the moment, but there are more games and applications on the way.

My mum has always struggled to get to grips with Windows, but she finds Ubuntu much easier.

You could always try Wubi which will install Ubuntu from within Windows. You can try it out and if you don't like it all you have to do is uninstall it from the usual place in Windows. Another one to look at if you have a netbook is Easy Peasy which will download and install to a usb memory stick.

Unfortunately we've got quite a few of those where we work. We've had a couple of viruses that have got through onto the internal network over the last couple of years and caused all sorts of problems.

Go and tell that to the sys admins where I work, and then maybe I can get a bit more oomph out of my work laptap!

True, but it's a bit tricky building a netbook from scratch!

Just try booting off the live cd and check that all of the drivers work before you install it. I've not had any problems on the various pcs and laptops that I've installed Ubuntu on, and if you buy it pre-installed then it should all work out of the box anyway.

Every time you buy a new PC you are paying for a copy of Windows, whether you want it or not ... why do you think Dell sell their Ubuntu PCs for £50 less? Why use an operating system that is prone to viruses and spyware, and unsupported if you use a pirated version, when you can get a free one that's faster and more secure?

As I said originally, this is a £200 netbook - it's not going to run the latest games whatever operating system you put on it. However, it does have some nifty 3d shooters, the usual card and board games, adventure games and rpgs all easily installable from the Add Programs menu. Why pay for Windows?

My netbook boots from cold in about 20 seconds and resumes reliably from sleep in 2 or 3. Clicking on the icon starts Firefox in another second or so. It doesn't need an anti-virus, it recognises my iPod without needing to install iTunes, it's got all of the office software and tools that I need already set up. The only thing it doesn't do is play recent Windows games, but why would I want to do that on a netbook in any case? What benefit would Windows give me, considering the extra cost and the trade off in speed and security?

Well, it's obviously better to have a slow, virus prone system that you have to pay extra for ... ;-)

One big plus point with Dell is that you can buy them with Ubuntu pre-installed and save the cost of having to buy Windows. I've got a Dell laptop at work and a Mini 9 at home, and they both work fine for me.

I've got a Dell Mini 9, which is excellent. It's ok for watching iPlayer and you can easily plug in an sd card if you need more storage. I'd also advise sticking to Ubuntu for the operating system - it's much faster than Windows (boots in seconds rather than minutes) and is fine for browsing with Firefox, email and the odd game or two.