ok... but still, how can you keep something running if you cant get it running in the first place? besides, i have no trouble keeping any XP computers running.
I just installed Fedora Core 6 on a laptop this afternoon. Took an hour from start to finish, 1 reboot, and I was up. No more difficult than Windows.
"something running if you cant get it running"
there is NO difference in installing a modern distro then installing a fresh copy of XP.
plus with liveCDs you can try it out first and make sure everything is going to work first. try that with XP.
You've obviously never tried to install a newer distro.
They're all graphical during install and use. Just point and click.
Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, and lots of others.