Ok so you have got a very big hd.
First of all make sure that it is completely clean.
The first thing you need to do is partition your hd.
If you don't want to spend any money you can do this but it is harder but if you have £40 or something like $80-90 spare then you can do it easier.
EXPENSIVE WAY
Buy Norton Partition magic and use it to partition your hard drive so that it has 3 partitions, a 20-30gig partition, a 2-4gig partition and the rest all one partition.
FREE WAY
Download PCLinuxOS from www.pclinuxos.com and burn it to a cd using an iso burner. Boot from CD drive and when you have logged in click the button in the bottom right and click run. type "diskdrake", select to cust partition and make a 20-30gig partition, a 2-4gig partition and the rest one partition. Make the 20-30gig partition ext2 and give the the label / and make the 2-4gig partition swap and make the rest ext2 and give it the label /home
If you need any more help feel free to PM me and if you have 2 computers I can add you on msn so I can guide you through it but if you can do it yourself then ok.
He has quite clearly said he has an empty hard drive, all he needs to do is partition it.... Does it not figure that FDISK is a component of windows, of which he doesnt have on an empty drive....EASY WAY
simply boot to DOS mode and type C:/FDISK
No offence but I don't think you know enough to even think of trying Linux.
For starters you don't have to PAY for the latest version, choose a FREE distribution.
Secondly, it's LINUX, not Lunix or Lunux.
Thirdly you don't even know what software you can use with it so you obviously haven't done any research whatsoever.
Fourthly... you don't know how to format a drive, yet you want to try installing and configuring a Linux distro?
Linux is nothing like Windows, if you have no idea what you're doing now you'll be staring blankly at your screen when you stick the CD in.
No offence but I don't think you know enough to even think of trying Linux.
For starters you don't have to PAY for the latest version, choose a FREE distribution.
Secondly, it's LINUX, not Lunix or Lunux.
Thirdly you don't even know what software you can use with it so you obviously haven't done any research whatsoever.
Fourthly... you don't know how to format a drive, yet you want to try installing and configuring a Linux distro?
Linux is nothing like Windows, if you have no idea what you're doing now you'll be staring blankly at your screen when you stick the CD in.
Or even a week!You never know what will happen and with little knowladge, it can take a day or two (or even more) to get a problem fully fixed
MS office isnt complatible with linux but there is OpenOffice which is free and basically the same and it can open documents and other files that were made and saved with MS office.
mrjack, apparently it is possible to install MS Office through WINE but it's not very stable so wouldn't be worth the hassle.