Microsoft Windows XP on our desktop PCs and Vista on the laptop PC. I cannot recommend Vista as an OS as it had a lot of problems from the start, and even after the service Pack 1 it still has problems. With each new version the Windows OS has become increasingly "bloatware", taking up too much space with little added functionality. I set for myself the goal of switching to Ubuntu Linux as an alternative OS. Ubuntu can be installed within less that 30 min. The whole OS of Ubuntu takes up about a tenth of the space that Windows need. Ubuntu is much faster and also programs under Ubuntu run faster than under Windows.
For the transition from Windows to Ubuntu I set the following goals:
We are slowly switching from Microsoft Office to Open Office. Currently we are using the English version. There is also a Hebrew edition of Open Office.
We use Biblioscape for generating reference lists for publications.
We use Irfanview for image viewing; Gimp for bitmap image editing; Inkscape for drawing vector graphics; and Microsoft Excel for scientific graphs.
Our favorite is Opera browser that is rich in customization options.
Anti-virus: AVG Anti-Virus Free.
File Manager: Freecommander
E-mail client: I switched from Outlook Express to Thunderbird.