trubleshooting a laptop

[Paul Smith]

On Wed, 2013-03-27 at 14:52 -0400, Sarunas Burdulis wrote:
> MS Office probably won't be very stable in Wine emulator. CrossOver
> (commercial) might be another option, but I haven't tried.

I'd actually be surprised if she had much trouble running standard
Office applications under Wine, especially if she's not using the
latest/greatest Office... and if she was using Windows XP that seems a
good bet.

I've used Crossover and it's very good:
   http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

It's a productized and supported version of Wine and all their code
fixes make it back into Wine... so they're great to give money to if you
need Wine.

If you want to go this way, make sure she brings her Office installation
CD or DVD with her as you'll need it to reinstall.  She won't be able to
transfer her Windows installation into Ubuntu (you can keep her Windows
disk partition, if you are careful and there's enough empty space that
Ubuntu can fit, so she doesn't have to back up and restore her files...
although backups are always a good idea anyway).

I sincerely doubt you'll be able to test all this stuff in a Live DVD
session, by the way...