Well, Office certainly isn't safe (in any sense of the word) - additionally, IBM wants to migrate Office to Linux
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/...xoffice_1.html
And with Codeweavers' CrossOver Office you can run OfficeXP, 2000 and '97 (and PhotoShop, AutoCAD, PaintShop Pro, Lotus Notes, Outlook and a whole stack of other things under Linux.
SuSe's Wine Rack
http://www.suse.com/us/private/produ...inux/winerack/ bundles CrossOver Office, CrossOver Plugin and WineX all together for a reasonable price. You can even run Internet Explorer if you're a retro masochist.
Mind you, OpenOffice is now getting so good that the need for M$'s clunky and expensive behemoth is moot, to say the least. And Ximian Evolution puts Outlook in the shade.
And with regards to my moans about missing Irfanview, I discovered gThumb tucked away in my Suse 9 distro. It isn't as slick as Irfan's masterwork but does essentially the same job. That's one of the problems - there's often an app. somewhere that does exactly what you need but no-one tells you about it (no commercial advertisements) - you just have to find out for yourself.
And for the more adventurous, Warren Woodford's MEPIS Debian distro
http://www.mepis.org/ looks very very nice indeed. At $9.95 it's probably the bargain of the century (apart from Manhattan Island that is...).
Linux really seems to be exploding now (the new 2.6 kernel is very serious stuff) and the M$ code leak can only add petrol to the flames. How pleasant to see choice coming back into the OS game.