Thanks, Bill:
Great advice. I'll probably use a spare laptop and do a repartition (about half windows and half linux) so I won't be risking any of my existing files or programs.
Regards,
Dave Rice
If you want to try other OS before changing, and only have one system, use VMWARE as a virtuall engine... Takes a little research, but works as a breeze when you want to test Linux distros.. No reformatting, or risk for dataloss..