Finally!

I set up Symantec's online virus scan and let it run overnight.  In spite of all the other scans I have run on this machine, it found 4 more Trojans on the computer.  I think it was just finding some straggler elements of what I had removed earlier.  I manually deleted the four files and then put the machine through a short battery of tests to make sure that everything still worked.

The machine is now going through a final defrag before I return it to its owner with a clean bill of health.  I instructed him to break his kids' fingers if he catches them trying to install KaZaA on the machine again.

Convince me

At risk of starting a flame war in my user comments I have shut off all screening.

In the past year or so I have had more than one person try and convince me that I would be better off running Linux as my primary operating system.

For the sake of argument, assume the following:

I am running a very stable Windows XP system which is completely current in all security patches and updates.  I am behind a hardware router/firewall, and am also running a current software firewall/anti-virus program.

I sometimes work from home and I need full compatibility with our MS Office suite (including complex spreadsheets and databases).  I also need full compatibility with our Exchange 2003 servers, and our other web-based applications.  My primary browser is Firefox (which I forgo in favour of IE when I need to access our Exchange servers because Firefox chokes on some of the features).

When I am not working, and not downloading porn stuff, I spend my time playing online games like Neverwinter Nights, and various Half-Life mods.

Your task - should you choose to accept it - is to convince me that I would be better off running Linux, or some variant thereof.  What would be my net benefit?

Assume that I am pragmatic enough that, if convinced that I would benefit from the switch, I would seriously consider doing so (maybe the latest SUSE) on my next hard drive upgrade -- which, given that I am running near capacity on my current one - should be comparatively soon.

Also note that "with a modest amount of work you can do everything you do now" is not a compelling argument because that's just change for the sake of change with no net benefit.

The floor is now yours.