Obligatory "Oh, Lord, not another Newbie!" post

[pyros]

I liked those three inch thick books, too. There are some manuals on
help.ubuntu.com but, for the most part, you are looking at that three
inch thick book right now.

The thing that surprised me the most about ubuntu was how easy they
made installing software. It's such a nice change from the clunky
installers that are all just different enough to irritate most windows
users and confuse others.

Hardware support:
One cool thing about ubuntu is that you can get it as a live cd. boot
your laptop with the cd drive set as the first boot device and just try
it out. It will be slow, but you can test the functionality like that.
Check your network card. 
If it works get on firefox, go check your medical transcription course
(it shouldn't pose a problem unless they use activex for something
critical).  Email shouldn't be a problem, the evolution email client is
installed by default. It's similar in appearance and functionality to
outlook, if you've used that. It takes just a couple of clicks to
install thunderbird, if you'd prefer.
wine:
Some people like it, I prefer beer. I was able to install wine with
almost no effort and then install the windows version of firefox and
then shockwave. No promises on it working for your particular purposes,
however. I don't use a dos emulator, but I hear good things(tm). If you
have the WAD files for doom, you can always use one of the many linux
ports of the doom engine. 

The only other thing that might be of help is Unofficial Ubuntu Starter
Guide at http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper


-- 
pyros