Have you tried looking at your Sounds and Audio Devices?. Look and see what your Speaker Settings say. Also you may need or want to try looking in Control Panel, System, Hardware,Device Manager. Make sure you have no yellow ? marks or anything under your Sound Controllers. If you do then some drivers are missing.

Just to clarify a few things with Linux. 1. You don't need to use Open office. If you take like three minutes and install (Wine) you can use Office 2003 or 2007. Wine also allows you to run a lot of other Windows based programs and some games.
And don't forget, there are a lot of good Emulators for Windows Programs that you can run with Linux.

Also, with Windows 7. With some tweaks you can get a lot of games to play. I know online games mainly MMO type games that use GameGaurd will crash on Windows 7. A lot of tweaking can be done to get it to work. I have 2Moons, Dekaron, Cabal and and a few others running on a PC with Win7. Just testing it out with some of the tech heads I know lol.

I have to say though, My opinion is this. Why on earth would Microsoft want to release a new Beta when there finial release of Vista STILL has issues? And if they keep going the way they are soon, your going to need a BFG9800 GT 1Gig video card just to look at your desktop lmao.

I will say Windows 7 may look ok but, a few issues with some online games and some programs. Still sorry to say it to all the Windows users out there. If you want flash and eye candy get away from Windows. Linux is way more stable, you can do so much more and for eye candy.... nothing beats it. Linux and Compiz Fusion rocks. Never mind if you grab yourself Emerald and mod away.


("In a world without walls or fences, who needs WINDOWS and GATES")