Being a computer geek, I have played around with alternatives to MicroSoft Windows — free, open-source alternatives, which boils down to various flavors of Linux.  I’ve tried Red Hat, Knoppix, Ubuntu and a couple others.  I’ve installed them as dual-boots with Windows or as a stand-alone OS on an old desktop.  They’ve all worked, and the installation process has gotten progressively easier.  Linux works out-of-the-box (so to speak) with more and more hardware.  Still, none of the versions of Linux proved compelling or useful enough for me to turn to it on a daily basis as a sub for Windows.

I guess what I wanted was a less geeky Linux.  I found one.

It’s  a commercial Linux designed for brain-dead easy installation on a wide variety of Windows XP and Vista computers.  It’s also designed for fast-loading when all you really want to do is check your email and browse the web.  The product is called “Presto” and it is sold by a company called  Xandros at http://prestomypc.com/.

Xandros Presto is free to try for a week and $19.95 if you like it and want to buy a license to continue using Presto on a single computer.  I tried it on an older Dell laptop running Windows XP.  Installation was quick and painless — just like installing any  program in Windows.  I got Presto to work with my home wireless network, which I never quite managed with any other Linux. I always had to use a LAN cable, not the best for a laptop.  The Presto web site claims that some users can be browsing the web less than 20 seconds after pressing the power button.  It takes a little longer on my laptop, but seems instantaneous compared to Windows XP.   Shut down is almost immediate — maybe four seconds.

You need four GB of available space to install Presto. It’s a big download, almost 500 MB, and took over half an hour on a high speed connection (high speed on my end, but apparently not on the other — I used the CNET Downloads.com option).

The initial installation comes with FireFox 3, Skype, and Open Office.  You can easily install other applications from the Presto “Store,” which features lots of  free, open source software as well as try-before-you buy stuff.  There is a “Store” icon on the Presto desktop, but you can also browse the applications at http://presto.cnr.com/.

You can access, open and edit documents created with Windows using the OpenOffice suite on Presto.

Windows XP was/ is taking several minutes to load on this computer — about 10 minutes before I can do anything useful, despite my best efforts to speed things up.  Now it takes half-a-minute.  That’s worth $20 to me.  Of course, hardware can differ a lot on Windows machines, and it’s hard to say if a new OS will work at all without trying it first.  So you want to try Presto for free before you buy a license.

If other Linux versions prove this easy to install, use and update — this ungeeky — then Windows may be in big trouble.  Unless MS plans to sell Windows 7 for twenty bucks. What would you say the odds are of that?

(Hat-tip to Dick DeBartolo, the Giz Wiz. I learned about Presto from his daily podcast with Leo Laporte.)