Without an operating system, computer hardware is inanimate and about as capable as a brick. In the early days, the operating system was considered to be an integral part of the computer until a brilliant move by Bill Gates when the hardware was separated from the operating system with MS.DOS Version 1.0. From this point, the operating system became glamorous, glitzy and branded as a consumer product - and had to be paid for separately to the hardware.

I use 3 operating systems - MS.Windows XPPro , Ubuntu 9,04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and Windows Mobile 6.0 on my HTC palmtop. I first started using Linux about 4 years ago. Up 'till then I used Microsoft exclusively apart from my experiences with some of the more exotic operating systems of the early 1980s which included the Commodore PET (with 16Kb RAM!), the Sinclair ZX-81, an o/s for designing integrated circuits called Gaelic and even an O/S called Gerbil.