Windows 7 is OK, but have you tried removing any malware once it's on there?? My friends have a netbook with Win 7, and they were having problems with things slowing down. I take a look... and, of course, they're using the Administrator account for their everyday browsing. So I create them a new basic user account, and the thing runs like brand new again. Eventually, this updated "Malware Removal Tool" was asking to install itself. I don't know much about Windows, so I thought it was the malware itself attempting to screw up the new account. Finally, I read a couple weeks later that there was an update earlier this month for this program. So I decided to run it manually (with the "MRT" command), and it found 11 malware junks on their computer. I wasn't paying attention, but I think I hit Remove, then Next and it closed. So I didn't get much info after waiting hours for the scan. The next day, I ran the thing again and it only shows one malware that is "partially removed". I was looking up directions to uninstall this stuff earlier, and it just looks like a royal pain in the [censored]. Even after running this stuff, the fact is that the system has been compromised. In these type situations, if it were my computer... the only solution is to reinstall. And I'd be reinstalling Linux.
Anybody who has problems with printer drivers in Linux hasn't used Linux in several years. Heck, even cameras that are built-in to laptops and LCD monitors work more often than not. Microphones work. Wifi components have been fairly standard for quite some time. Printers, actually, are more plug and play than they are on Windows. I plug it in on a new Linux install, and the driver is built into the system. That's just the way the Linux desktop kernel is designed [as opposed to the embedded kernel], as a comprehensive mammoth of drivers. You plug it in and it works. Nothing to research, download, upload from CD, or whatever.
More often than not, hardware that doesn't work on Linux is junk hardware that actually offloads all processing to the desktop CPU; this type of hardware is nothing more than an adapter for the most part. Any good hardware will actually do processing onboard and won't increase CPU load more than a tiny fraction. Instead of buying junk hardware and begging someone to write you some drivers... why not research the hardware and see whether it's actually worth a hoot to begin with?? A rule of thumb is that if it works on Linux (which it probly does, it's not 1998 anymore) then it must be decent hardware.
