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Don't give up on the modem quite yet. I have read some things where some people manage to get their modems working in Linux. Just requires a bit of tweaking. I'm sorry I can't give a bit more advise here, but I went to broadband about a year-and-a- half ago. Sure don't miss that dial up stuff.
Yes there is an office suit built into Mandrake, and it is pretty nice. I just downloaded and installed Star Office 5.2 so that I could import all of my Microsoft Office stuff. It works with everything but Publisher files so I'm working on a fix for that. You will be impressed with what comes with Mandy. It is all there for you. Some really nice email programs too.
As far as anti-virus goes, there is none that is built into Mandrake that I've seen. Not much need for it in the Linux world because most of the viruses are written for Windows and exploit the weeknesses in Outlook, Outlook Express and IE. The file structure in Linux is different than Windows. It is much more secure becasue you need, "Root," privilage to mess with anything critical to the system. In order to get "Root" privilage, you have to log in as "Root." You must supply a username and password to get in. This might seem a bit intrusive at first, but once you see the beauty of this it really make sense. A virus would have to know your username and password in order to damage the files. In Windows, everyone has "Root" privilages. I have seen some anti-virus software out there, but I think it mostly looks for Windows type viruses in order to weed them out of your system. I personally don't run any so I'm not sure here.
Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.
freezinbutt
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