This just isn't true anymore. OpenOffice.org is a perfectly capable office suite and recent compatability with Office has been pretty good in most cases. Performance has also improved, and will be perfectly acceptable on a relatively new computer.
Outside of Office software,
Audacity is a great free audio editor
SciTE or the java-based Jedit are good text editors.
The GIMP is a good image editor, available here for Windows.
Mozilla or one of its components for mail/web browsing
For media playing you might want to try Zinf (formerly FreeAmp), Foobar2000 (nice light weight music player), WinAMP for Windows. MPlayer is a good video player for Linux (and Windows) and XMMS is a capable music player for Linux.
Oh yeah, and for email, I suggest setting up an IMAP server on an old machine and using that to store your email. This can be quite difficult, though allows you to browse your email from Linux and Windows. Thunderbird is rock solid and good even though only in the early stages of development.
If this guy had advocated racism as the solution to 3Gs problems, then I would agree with you. He didn't however, so the analogue with Hitler's plans for a utopian Europe (based as they were on the extermination of the Jewish race) is invalid. If Hitler were to post in this thread, I would not ignore his opinions on 3G, just because I disagreed with his thoughts on race.
To be fair, the rest of his post was well thought out and could be considered insightful. Just because he ended his post with a racist slur, doesn't mean we should disregard everything he said.
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Outside of Office software, Audacity is a great free audio editor
SciTE or the java-based Jedit are good text editors.
The GIMP is a good image editor, available here for Windows.
Mozilla or one of its components for mail/web browsing
For media playing you might want to try Zinf (formerly FreeAmp), Foobar2000 (nice light weight music player), WinAMP for Windows. MPlayer is a good video player for Linux (and Windows) and XMMS is a capable music player for Linux.
Celestia is a nice space exploration program.
Jabber is good for instant messaging or Trillian or GAIM if you need to chat on MSN, AIM, ICQ etc.
GNUCash is a capable accounting program.
Oh yeah, and for email, I suggest setting up an IMAP server on an old machine and using that to store your email. This can be quite difficult, though allows you to browse your email from Linux and Windows. Thunderbird is rock solid and good even though only in the early stages of development.
If this guy had advocated racism as the solution to 3Gs problems, then I would agree with you. He didn't however, so the analogue with Hitler's plans for a utopian Europe (based as they were on the extermination of the Jewish race) is invalid. If Hitler were to post in this thread, I would not ignore his opinions on 3G, just because I disagreed with his thoughts on race.
To be fair, the rest of his post was well thought out and could be considered insightful. Just because he ended his post with a racist slur, doesn't mean we should disregard everything he said.