With the huge government stimulus for EMR you may find this a busy field in the near future. Check out some of the companies working on this. Doctors are scrambling to implement the mandate to "digitize" their records and this may be an opportunity. I have been assisting local docs in their offices, it is interesting. Some of the systems they are using are genuine antiques ( I am working on getting some of the data from a 15 year old Unix machine, it is still spinning and has a "huge" 100 meg hd with patient information in a proprietary format!). A real challenge will be getting all the new medical records systems to talk to each other and transfer information, integrate lab tests into the data base and so on. Google has a "medical record" online system which is very clumsy, and if this is the best they can do there is room for real innovation in this field. Dr B

Ubuntu 9.04: Works great on my old Dell laptop D600 latitude, it automatically found the drivers for the broadcom wireless card, installed them, perfect connectivity and all the hardware interfaces (audio, video output to external monitors, etc) work well. I think M$ better start to worry, this is a fine OS. Anyone can install it and have a working laptop in about 20 minutes. ;-) Bobby B

We used Ubuntu and Open Office for a (very) small office. We had 6 computers in a simple network, using OO. The staff had no problems with it after some training, and some of them asked me to convert their personal computers to Ubuntu after they got used to this excellent operating system. Our experience was very positive. We saved quite a bit of money, not having to purchase M$ stuff! Bob B.

considering the oppositional attitude we see in kids (some of them anyway) this action by the teacher may be the best thing that has happened to Linux for kids! They will check out the OS in sheer defiance of authority. ;-) bb

I agree. As a family doc I have these discussions all the time. The biggest progress we have made in medicine is really the vaccines and public health measure that our society has developed. Trying to explain the seriousness of the diseases that DON'T happen because of the vaccines is frustrating, especially since most of the patients are totally clueless about biology and science in general. We need to cut out the sports and cheerleading and teach more science at all levels of school. docbob