Saul, great post and I tend to agree with you. We still need desktop based services because we’re not always connected and having applications that interact well with eachother is important. Rather than Windows and Microsfot, I would present that Linux is a desktop solution that should be examined in more detail.
OpenOffice is a well integrated office suite. Novell Evolution and Mozilla Thunderbird are very stable and integrate well with a Linux desktop and OpenOffice. Evolution works with Exchange through Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA), Thunderbird supports RSS, IMAP, POP. Linux has Firefox, Ephiphany, Opera and other browsers. Linux also has IM clients (gaim integrates with Evolution), VoIP clients, etc.
Linux will allow you a choice of desktop managers – KDE and Gnome. A Linux distro like Ubuntu or Suse will also give you MP3, DVD, Video playback right out of the box.
Give it a test by downloading VMWare’s free player and a VMWare Linux browser appliance image or a community image. You will be able to run Linux as a virtual machine right within your Windows installation and if you don’t like it delete the image directory and uninstall VMWare Player.
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