[Always Right]

The Balance laptop is compatible with other office and Internet suites like Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, and can be used with more than 1,000 printers and hardware components. With the included office suite OpenOffice.org (www.linspire.com/openoffice), users can open, edit and exchange files such as word processing documents (.doc), spreadsheets (.xls) or presentations (.ppt) in a familiar, comfortable environment. The laptop's included Mozilla Internet suite (www.linspire.com/mozilla) comes with a fast-functioning browser and email program that can display Web-based forms, PDF documents, images, and multimedia files. The suite's included instant messenger program works with AOL, MSN and Yahoo! logins.

No sure this does DVD playback, but if they add a checkbook program, they probably would have 99 percent of what the average person uses a computer covered outside games. But really your game consoles are better for games anyways.

[goldstategop]

You can download Firefox and Thunderbird if you like 'em. They run on Linux.

[goldstategop]

Checkbook? There's GNUCash - about as good as Microsoft Money or Intuit's Quicken.