Since the debate is on, I'm surprised that no one mentioned Linux. If you want something stable, not to mention free, check out Ubuntu Linux. You can run it on a windows box and some Mac's and it's very user friendly. As far as Office apps, take a look at Openoffice. I'm Microsoft Certified and they send me licenses for all their products. I chose to use Openoffice instead of Microsoft office. There are versions for Linux, Mac's and Windows. At the house I have a Mac laptop and desktop, a couple of Linux boxes and four Windows laptops. I hate Windows but have to use it in my job. I'm Director of IT for a govt agency and get to play with all the new toys. I'm also responsible for a world-wide network running Unix boxes. Some of those haven't been rebooted in several years. Macs run on a flavor of open source unix by the way.