I live in a rural area, about a mile outside the nearest village/town.

I use Virgin as an ISP over a BT phone line, and my download speeds are noticeably faster than my mother's connection. She uses BT Internet as an ISP, but lives in central Reading, so one would assume should have a faster connection.

Punchline being, if you're using BT, and you're unhappy with the speed, give Virgin a try.

I hope they bring out a UK version. MYOB have sold their UK operation to a web outfit, and there's not much choice for Mac users.

I think Asus? Acer? has said the split on netbook sales is two thirds MS XP, one third Linux.

The point I was trying to make is, that with OEMs installing Linux on new machines, the user base will increase enough for developers to consider the platform as a sales target.

The success of Firefox and Safari have forced? encouraged? web developers to target browsers beyond Internet Explorer.

But you can't install an application to run under Local Service from a non-admin account, and even from an admin account, it would require an UAC confirmation.

I've been using XP Home a little recently (new netbook), and this is annoying the dickens out of me.

On a Mac, a non-admin user would be prompted for an admin user name & password to install an application. On the XP machine, I have to either log in as admin to install something, or change the non-admin account to an admin account.

I realise I may well be preferring what I'm used to, but I feel the Mac system - prompting for an admin's OK - is better.

MS Windows achieved monopoly status because OEMs installed it on new machines. The size of the user base made it the platform for developers to target.

With netbooks, Linux is being installed by OEMs.

3. are less likely to visit dodgy websites

I don't think that's valid. Past exploits have used syndicated advertising, e.g. DoubleClick, Falk.

Obfuscated TCP might be useful here:

"Obfuscated TCP is a transport layer protocol that adds opportunistic encryption. It's designed to hamper and detect large-scale wiretapping and corruption of TCP traffic on the Internet."