ubuntu

i was bought a dell mini laptop with ubuntu and really need windows as my saved wirk will not open on windows computers, is there anyway i can replace the software on the laptop with windows ?

You would need to buy a copy of XP or Vista to put on there if you really need Windows, however, the machine may be under-powered for Windows.

You should be able to find applications to open most of your saved files that will run under Ubuntu. If you are talking of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, try looking for Open Office. That will run on both Windows and Ubuntu, and is free.

I was asked to look at this for a friend recently, but her Dell only had an 8GB solid state hard drive. Not enough for an installation of windows to run.
I looked at upgrading the drive, but it needs one of a non-standard physical shape (even though the interface is standard)
For instance a 64GB one from Scan at £144 - see
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Super-Talent-FDM64GFDL-64GB-MLC-DW-Half-Mini-2-PCIe-Solid-State-Drive-for-Dell-Mini-9
(make sure you check compatibility before buying)

However by the time you've added £80+ for a copy of windows the economics look poor - especially if extra RAM is needed as well. You'd almost be better off putting the mini in a cupboard and buying a new "real" laptop

I have serviced a Dell mini supplied running Windows XP on a solid state drive and I think the drive capacity was 8 GB. There certainly wasn't much extra space for files but it should be workable if you use a USB pen drive for extra storage capacity.

Can you tell us what applications you are using on Ubuntu, the work from which won't open in Windows?

For the moment, I'm assuming you're using Open Office. In that case, all you need to do is re-open you're saved work, got to the File -> Save as menu and re-save your file as an MS Office type (e.g. Word for Windows 2003 .doc). Also, ensure that the file name has the appropriate 3 character file extension (e.g. .doc for Word files). These are not mandatory for Ubuntu but are (effectively) for Windows.

You can make saving in Windows-compatible formats the default by going into the Open Office Preferences and setting it there.

I've never used Microsoft Office in my life and I've always used operating systems other than Windows (OS/2, Solaris, BSD, Linux, yes I even ran Ubuntu for a while).

There is no reason for you to switch to windows, all the work you produce can be saved into a format that's compatible with people who are stuck with windows.

This doesn't really answer your question but like the previous post made you don't need to change your OS for perceived office file incompatabilities. Saving files in openoffice saveas option will offer Microsoft compatable file formats.
Let us know what types of problems you are having and with type of files.

in regards to installing xp on an 8gb it can be done but its not really worth it.

If you still want a Windows OS... have a look at

http://www.nliteos.com/
and
http://www.vlite.net/ for vista