30 Day Challenge for December

My 30 day challenge for December - 'No using Microsoft products' finally ended. Here's how I found alternates to get my work done.

OS - Ubuntu Linux 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)
Browser - Google Chrome 8.0 for Linux
Office Suite - Google Docs (Online), Open Office 3.2(Offline)
Messenger - Empathy (Contains all contacts from Gmail, Windows Live and Facebook Chat)
Email - Gmail (My school email which is hosted by Hotmail is routed to Gmail, so I did not have to log in to hotmail to check my school email). Although I don't use any clients, I have Thunderbird installed as a backup.
Games - I don't play many games. I stick to the Zynga ones more these days.
Music - Rythmbox Media player and an iPod. I used SharePod to update the iPod instead of iTunes because there is no iTunes for Linux 'yet'.
School Work - Eagle for Linux from CadSoft for designing PCB boards and yes I stayed away from MPLab IDE for a month.

I could not avoid using Windows XP in the labs at school as the authorities did not permit me to install Linux on any of the school machines in spite of me insisting that its absolutely free. But to minimize damage I used XP to the minimal amount. I worked on hardware that did not require me to use the computer too much all through the month. There is no MPLab IDE for Linux yet, so I did not have  a choice in that matter, but I stayed away from code too. Occasionally I joined my colleague to help him get past bottlenecks in programming.

Here is the funny part. Only when I passed day 22, did I realize that I use a Windows Mobile cellphone. But then again, Windows Mobile 6.5 was such a disaster of an OS that I did not use it for anything except calling, messaging and alarms. I preferred using the wifi on the iPod touch while I was on the go. So technically, the cellphone would not have made much of a difference.

I am a big fan of Open Source products. Hence the funny challenge for the last month of the decade. Inspiration from Matt Cutts.