As the months continued, so did the problems. The site was run over a cable connection, hosted on a Windows based computer and an Access database. It became a struggle to keep everything up and running.
Less than three months after the initial start, everything was moved over to a more reliable Internet Provider, and the site really started to grow exponentially. With this, the problems with the home computers started to increase. Frequent crashes and virus infections went from a monthly nuisance to a daily problem, mainly due to the massive amount of infected emails that were arriving. As our Windows computers became more unreliable, we started to look for a better solution. Some attempts were made to install and run Red Hat Linux and a few other flavors of non-MS operating systems. All of them turned out to be a challenge to install the main Operating System, let alone install applications. Between our daytime jobs, and working on expanding and maintaining the website, there was no time to learn a new operating system.

Some Google searches later, we found out about Linspire and more importantly, Click and Run Warehouse. We spent some time on the forums to find out more, and as soon as Linspire 3.0 was released, we decided to invest a few bucks and purchase it. One day after, the download was complete, and a CD was burned. That evening, the first successful installation of Linspire on our old test PC was finished. In the days after, our other PCs were set to Dual-Boot Windows and Linspire.
It only took a few weeks for us to get used to a few minor differences between the two operating systems and make a complete move to Linspire. This was four years ago. Since then, we've purchased two laptops with Linspire pre-installed from Sub500.com. One of which is currently being used as our media station, linked via USB to our stereo system and hosting thousands of MP3 songs that were transferred from our CD collection. The other has been retired. Last year, two new laptops were purchased from Mega Bytes (linspirenetwork.com) and they are still in use. The wireless connection allows us to move anywhere in the house and work right away. Most of the old PC's have been retired, except for one which hosts all our shared network files and printers. This one obviously runs Linspire also, and another PC which has a dual boot between Linspire and Windows and is used for Flash development.
All in all, we've spent a few hundreds on yearly CNR Gold memberships, and it has been well worth it. Because we have purchased several laptops with Linspire preinstalled, they all came with a one year Linspire Gold CNR membership. Since our move, the kids PCs have required several reinstalls of Windows, and their PC's and laptops take on average 20 to 40 minutes just to start up!
I feel it's safe to say that Linspire has saved us thousands of dollars both in time and software, just by working the way that it advertises it will. Because of this, it's easy for us to justify purchases of the few CNR programs that require additional funds, such as StarOffice. We've also been telling people about our experience, and encourage them to at least consider a dual-boot option. We've encouraged both end users and companies to go legal and use Openoffice instead of the very expensive MS Office alternative.

For myself, here are the advantages and disadvantages of using Linspire. Pro's:

• I don't need to know anything about Linux.
• All CNR software automatically updates.
• New software is only a click away
• Inexpensive
• I only reboot my laptop once or twice a week
• No viruses!
• CNR Isles reduce installation and configuration of a new machine on the network to an hour instead of days.

• Shopping for hardware takes a little more research
• Adobe flash developer is not yet supported