“Oh, good grief. Nobody in their right mind would buy or use any MS product beyond a necessary OS and a legacy MS Office installation. Same with Adobe, by the way.”
You don’t even need Microsoft’s OS or office suite to do the basics. At this very moment I am running Linux from a bootable memory stick. Besides the OS and browser, the stick also contains a full office suite (LibreOffice) and other basic applications.
Bravo, I have been using Linux since 2006, there are many flavors.
“I am running Linux from a bootable memory stick”
Please link to a site with a simple, thorough tutorial. I’ve been very disappointed with what I’ve found.